Titans: Legacies
by Rider Paladin
Summary: More than a decade after the events of Infinite Crisis, new heroes have begun to rise, but new foes have also risen to challenge them. And old foes have plans of their own for these neophytes.
1. Marshaling of Forces

"Titans: Legacies"

Chapter 1: "Marshaling of Forces"

Disclaimer: The majority of the characters that will appear in this do not belong to me; they belong to DC Comics as people in the employ of DC Comics created them for and licensed them to DC Comics. I make no _monetary_ profit whatsoever.

Author's note: This is going to be more than a simple "next-generation" story. It's going to take a look at legacies, because – face it – DC Comics characters, heroic or villainous, are based in legacies. Although DC editorial will never let it happen, the fact remains that many characters in the DCU cannot remain in their current roles forever. Eventually, they will have to move up or move on and thus this story is going to look at the future of the DCU through the eyes of the younger generations, who have grown into their own and are now preparing to take the reins from their predecessors.

If you notice that there are things that seem different from the mainstream DC Universe, we'll just say that this is the reality that exists between New Earth-1 and New Earth-2; New Earth-1.5 in other words. Now, let's get this party started.

* * *

A grayish humanoid figure that looked like a partly melted clay statue stood in a dimly lit room. By sheer force of will, he forced himself into a human shape, resembling a black-haired teenager. He'd modeled this particular look after the male Robins, who had all been black-haired teenagers. However, he'd had the current Robin in mind when coming up with specific facial features. He'd had to wing it on the eyes, though; all the Robins wore domino masks with whiteout lenses, preventing onlookers from seeing their eyes.

It was a kind of obsession that had driven him to model his human form after Robin. They were both heirs to a legacy; Robin to the legacy of the Batman, he to the legacy of Clayface. He'd inherited the power from his parents, who had both been previous incarnations of Clayface, but his powers evolved somewhat differently. He had to admit, it came with perks, such as the ability to pretend – very convincingly – that he was anyone he wanted to be.

He'd gotten an invitation, passed down by a shadowy figure who had been gone before he could get a good look at him (or her; his night vision wasn't good enough to tell gender). The invitation was the very reason he was here, here in this abandoned fort. To his left, he heard a whirr of power, a whirr substantiated by warping air. The warping air began to glow, the glow taking the shape of a human female. The glow substantiated itself further as a lavender-haired girl in a royal purple armored bustier with sharp silver W-shaped double bars designed to resemble an eagle taking flight and a silver belt holding up skintight royal purple pants. Silver boots encased her feet and calves, silver bracelets encased her wrists, and a silver tiara with a purple bursting star in the center rested on her head.

"Who are you?" Clayface asked.

"Lyta," the girl styled like some kind of "Dark Wonder Woman" replied.

"You look like you ought to be called Wonder Girl." Clayface smirked in amusement.

"Clay infused with life. Just like _her._" Lyta had an expression equal parts amusement and disgust.

"Don't start squabbling now," a new voice hissed, prompting both teens to turn and behold a black-clad teenage boy. His attire was a form-fitting black suit with guards in the wrists and a red dragon print wrapping around the left arm. He held a plain bow, along with a plain quiver filled with plain arrows. His face was partly concealed by a mask that covered the lower half of his face, leaving everything from his eyes and upward exposed.

"And you might be?" Lyta asked.

"Oni," the archer replied coldly.

"Did you give me that invitation?" Clayface asked.

"No, I received one myself," Oni replied.

"If it wasn't you, who was it?" Clayface inquired.

"We'll see soon enough," Oni answered.

Just then, it suddenly became drafty inside the fort. Lyta briefly sniffed the air and smirked. "Runners."

The draftiness stopped, signaling only that the source of it had stopped. Actually, there were two sources, a boy and a girl. The boy was of average height for his age and blond, his eyes covered by orange goggles and his body encased in skintight black with lightning-edged green running down the middle. The girl was slightly taller and fiery-haired, her body sheathed in form-fitting indigo with silver lightning crisscrossing the legs and meeting in an arc on her chest. An indigo lightning tattoo rested beneath her left eye.

"Inertia. Savitrix." Lyta nodded to the two of them.

Savitrix smiled pleasantly enough, but there was poison in that smile. Inertia simply scowled.

"You have any idea who brought us here?" Clayface asked.

"I may have an indication," Savitrix replied liltingly.

Clayface roared and shifted his arm into its true clay form, extending it violently toward Savitrix. Her answer to that was simply to reach back and plunge her hand through his arm at super-speed, ripping it in half until the torn halves hung uselessly from his shoulder. Clayface regenerated the arm, groaning in pain. "You bitch."

"A bitch, am I?" Savitrix asked. "So I am, but don't think you can try that again and live. Actually, it's quite useless; you might as well be molasses compared to me."

"Much as I don't agree with Clayface's actions, I want to know who invited us, or I'm just going to go home," Lyta pouted.

"Don't be a brat," Inertia sneered.

"Who are you calling a brat, you little punk?!" Lyta asked indignantly.

"You," Inertia answered coldly.

Magical energy crackled in Lyta's hands, the daughter of Circe and Ares being perfectly ready to use it on the dark speedster. Said dark speedster was calculating how to dodge the blast that would be coming in his immediate future and retaliate against Lyta.

"Enough," a mechanical-sounding female voice spoke.

The five already present turned to meet the speaker, a girl in form-fitting black nano-weave with a mask that was black on the right side and light blue on the left. Whiteout lenses stared out from both sides of the masks, while light blue mesh-weave covered her arms from the shoulders down. A sheathed katana rested behind her hip and utility cuffs wrapped around her wrists and beneath her knees. The utility cuffs came attached to black gloves with light blue fingers and black boots with bluish-silver steel toes.

"Who are you supposed to be, Lady Deathstroke?" Inertia asked mockingly.

"Deathstroke is the one who sent me," the girl replied. "He is the one who called you all here. Be patient and he will arrive."

"You shouldn't have given it away so soon," Savitrix pouted lightly.

"Anyone else, or is it just us?" Clayface asked.

"Two more," the masked girl replied.

It didn't take long for the final two to show themselves. One was a pale young man in black stylized archer gear. A high-tech compound bow rested at his hip, along with a more conventional firearm strapped to his left thigh. His hair was pitch black, a striking contrast with the paleness of his skin. His stare was cold, analyzing everyone with it. The other . . .

The other was a teenage girl in a black short jacket with an upside-down silver pentagon buckle that had the letter "U" engraved on it. Under that jacket she wore a black bikini top and black leather short shorts. Black laced-up knee-high boots encased her feet and calves. The skin that was exposed by her outfit – and there was plenty – was smooth and her exposed stomach was highly toned. Her long black hair was tied in a ponytail.

"Quincy, Ultrawoman," the masked girl greeted. "Nice to see you managed to make it."

Quincy nodded, while Ultrawoman spoke. "Whatever. Now, what the hell are we here for?"

"You're here because I asked you here," a menacing purr of a voice answered.

The eight teens looked around and saw the man who had brought them all together. He stood six feet four inches tall, although his sheer menacing presence made him seem even taller. He was garbed in black with bluish-silver mesh-weave extending from slightly below his shoulders and wrapping around his muscular abdomen. Orange gloves, buccaneer boots, and belt added to the ensemble and a bisected black-and-orange mask with a singular lens on the left (orange) side completed it. A sword was sheathed on his back and a bandolier full of rifle shells wrapped around his torso. The accompanying rifle was strapped to his hip, although it did not seem to impede his movement at all.

"Deathstroke," Inertia greeted tersely. "You've changed your look."

"You haven't," Deathstroke replied. "But then again, you've spent the past decade in Speed Force stasis. Shouldn't have underestimated the love a certain Mr. Allen enjoyed from his fellow heroes, particularly the speedsters, such as it was."

Inertia growled, but he knew better than to do more than that. Attacking Deathstroke would get him nowhere but in the same condition that had prompted the late Bart Allen's shift from Impulse to Kid Flash. Besides, it was Deathstroke's agent Savitrix that had freed him, forcing his system into overdrive to shock him back to normal and recharging his connection to the Speed Force.

"Anyway, you were all called here for a simple task," Deathstroke answered. "You are all the heirs to the legacies of the antagonists of those who call themselves 'heroes.' Cassius, you are Clayface, as were your parents before you; Quincy, you were trained by Merlyn; Oni, you and the current Black Canary have a shared paternal link; Lyta, you possess power on the order of a goddess, power enough to challenge Wonder Woman herself as your mother and father did before you. Inertia, you are the reverse of every heroic trait possessed by those who called themselves the Flash; Savitrix, you aim to take up where Savitar left off; Ultrawoman, you are the heir to Ultraman and the perfect foe for the latest Superboy."

"What about Little Miss Terminator?" Clayface asked mockingly.

"Executrix," Deathstroke corrected. "That is what she is called. And she is the heir to _my_ legacy."

"Blah, blah, $#&) blah," Ultrawoman sneered. "What are we here for, old man?!"

Deathstroke clucked his tongue. "Such an impatient, rude little girl you are. But with an upbringing like yours I should expect that. You do have a point, though; you do deserve to know what you're here for. You're here . . . to teach the older generation of 'heroes' what it means to not be able to see their children grow up as they intended, because they won't be able to grow up at all."

Inertia smirked cruelly. "A plan I can get behind. I wonder how West's brats are doing, anyway. I haven't gotten the chance to meet them yet."

* * *

Beneath the city, two teenage girls walked down the stairway into a cavern that had been revamped into a high-tech fortress. The fortress was a coming-of-age present of sorts to the girls, to aid them in crime-fighting and assembling a team for that purpose. The technology in the fortress was a combination and advancement of technology culled from Batman, Superman, and generations of Justice Leagues and Titans. Put together, it gave the girls access to information hubs all over the world and enabled transport to just about any place within the country. (They were still working on transnational transportation, but the girls had been told that they'd get there.)

Who were these two girls, anyway, that they could have such technology commissioned for them by the greatest heroes on the planet? Only the daughters of two founding Titans who themselves had gone on to the Justice League, becoming leaders there as opposed to the rookies they'd been when they started. Their names were Lian Harper, the markswoman feared by the criminal underworld as Red Hood; and Mar'i Grayson, whose fire shone in the night sky like a star going nova, hence the name she took in battle: Nightstar.

Lian was a slip of a girl, only five feet six inches and built like a feline, all lean muscle and slender grace. She wore a costume that was largely black with red trim down the middle and sides, with red archer's gauntlets and a hooded red mantle. She was wearing her hood down, exposing curly red hair; it was naturally black, but she'd started dyeing it in her adolescence. Her eyes, on the other hand, were covered by red-tinted sunglasses, the lenses of which were specially designed with various visual enhancements. Her lips were slightly upturned, as though in an almost-smile of mischief.

Mar'i, on the other hand, was tall, quite tall. Specifically, she was six feet three inches – only an inch shy of her late mother Starfire – and built much the same way as her late mother, voluptuous curves and hard muscle combined into one tantalizing golden bronze form. Her hair cascaded down her back and to her knees in glossy waves of ebony. A low-cut black leotard with a translucent purple wing symbol forming the neckline clung to her torso and black boots encased her feet and calves. Pupil-less and iris-less green eyes stared out intensely from beneath a delicately structured and classically beautiful face.

"Your dad always said he'd get you a Batcave of your own someday," Mar'i remarked.

"_Our_ own," Lian amended. "Your dad helped out, too."

"I suppose that's his way of saying sorry."

"He was going through a tough time. After what happened to Aunt Kory . . ."

"I know." Mar'i looked down sadly. "I know."

Lian reached up to plant a hand on the older girl's shoulder. "At least you had a mother you could be proud of."

Mar'i looked at Lian. "At least yours is still around."

Lian's slightly quirked lips turned up more fully in a smile. "Enough of the pity party. Least our dads are still around, and they've got more than enough love for both of us."

"When're the rest of them going to show up?" Mar'i asked.

"They should be getting here soon," Lian replied. "And it's not easy; they're coming from all over. One of them doesn't even live on land at all."

The first to arrive was Olivia Queen, inheritor of her mother's titles of "Black Canary" and "Blonde Bombshell." She was the spitting image of her mother in her youth, except for the fact that she was seventeen years old. She wore a black leather jacket with ridged armor on the shoulders over what looked like a sleeveless black leather leotard with fishnets.

"Hey there, Jailbait Canary," Lian greeted slyly.

Olivia glared at Lian, though there was no anger or malice in the glare. "Shut up, Little Red Riding Hood."

Mar'i snickered slightly; the banter between Lian and her "little cousin" was always amusing to see. Truthfully, Olivia wasn't so little, but that was just what happened when a symbiotic biomechanical weapon merged with a girl who should only be seven or eight. Said weapon, dubbed Excalibur by those who had forced it upon her, had accelerated Olivia's physical and mental development to a point in her teens. Despite that, Olivia still sometimes acted like the child she was supposed to be.

"Mar'i!" Olivia squealed, hugging the Tamaranean hybrid. Mar'i smiled and hugged Olivia back. When Olivia had still been physically a child, she had become rather attached to Mar'i – who babysat her frequently – and that attachment had increased since her forced aging. After all, as Olivia reasoned, she was now old enough to do "big girl" stuff with Mar'i.

"No hug for me?" Lian asked, arching an eyebrow.

Olivia gently released Mar'i and turned to Lian. "You get one, too, Little Red Riding Hood." The next thing Lian knew, she was caught in Olivia's embrace. "By the way, where's your boyfriend?"

"He's too old for you," Lian answered.

"And you're too old for him," Olivia retorted gently.

"She's too old for whom?" a familiar young man's voice questioned. The three girls turned and spotted a fourteen-year-old boy dressed in a black wetsuit with navy highlights down the arms and legs. His hair was black and hung in his eyes as though wet, which it probably was, given where he usually spent his time. Purple eyes gazed out of a soft face with gentle, slightly feminine features.

"I'm too old for no one," Lian answered, gently sliding out of Olivia's hug. "Not even you, Cerdian."

"Don't tell my mother that," Cerdian answered, smiling slyly. "You'd destroy the one flimsy excuse she has for not wanting me to be with you."

Mar'i groaned. "You're corrupting him, aren't you, Lian?"

Lian grinned shamelessly. "That's the fun part of a relationship with a younger man. Teaching him, molding him, shaping him . . ."

"I love you, too," Cerdian piped up with a tongue-in-cheek grin belying the sincerity in his eyes.

"I know, Ian," Lian answered.

"How'd you get here?" Mar'i asked. "Thought your mother would kill you if you came here."

"It's not that bad," Cerdian replied. "She wouldn't lay a finger on her 'precious little mage,' but the rest of you are another story." He chuckled briefly. "Anyway, all I really did was crack open a trans-dimensional portal when she wasn't looking." He whistled briefly. "Nice cave."

"Thanks," Lian replied. "We're going to christen it later."

"Uh, by 'we' do you mean 'you and I,' or 'you, Mar'i, Olivia, and I'?" Cerdian asked, genuinely puzzled.

Lian looked at him briefly and saw that he genuinely was confused. "Still such an innocent. Or would you _like_ it if Mar'i and Olivia got in on our fun?"

Cerdian blushed. "Um . . . uh . . ."

Lian laughed. "Never mind."

There was a sudden gust and then it stopped, revealing a redheaded young woman and a black-haired teenage boy. The young woman was dressed in skintight red with lightning-like silver lines forming a makeshift stripe and wore lightning-stemmed silver goggle-like glasses over her eyes. The boy was dressed in skintight silver and black, the black being a stripe down the middle of his uniform and framed in lightning-like red. He wore black gloves and boots with two thick buckles on each one and a black open-head cowl with goggle-like silver lenses and lightning-winged ear caps.

"Hey, Iris, Jai," Mar'i greeted.

"Hey yourself, babe," Jai answered, clicking his tongue coolly at her.

Mar'i giggled. "Thanks."

"Don't mind my brother," Iris said. "He's being an idiot right now, but that's nothing unusual."

Iris and Jai West were the twin children of Wally West, the original Kid Flash and the third man to call himself the Flash. The connection to the Speed Force they'd inherited from their father had caused them to age at an accelerated rate, much like their cousin Bart Allen had. Like with Bart, Wally had finally managed to find a way to stabilize their growth, but when he had, Iris had become physically 10 and Jai had become physically 8. Their powers had also evolved differently; still based in acceleration but not necessarily in running.

Cerdian was the son of founding Titan Garth of Atlantis, originally known as Aqualad and currently known as Tempest, and the aquatic metahuman Dolphin. As taught by Garth himself, Cerdian was an accomplished sorcerer for someone of his age. Plus, there was just something about him that had never quite lost its innocence. Granted, there was plenty of time for that to change, but nobody was counting on that. Not seriously.

"What have you guys been up to?" Mar'i asked.

"Kicking ass," Jai replied. "It's like bad guys are jumping up just to get knocked down."

"The new Rogues giving you any trouble?" Lian asked.

"Not really," Iris replied. "Not as much as they would have before the old ones killed Bart. Ever since, every crime-fighter in the country has wanted a piece of the Rogues, not just us."

Mar'i and Lian looked downcast. They had both known Bart, been babysat by Bart. He had been a constant bright spot in their lives and when he was snuffed out like that . . . something in them both had died when they found out. Ever since then, their world had been just a little less joyful, a little darker and bleaker. It had been the Rogues that did that to them, that did that to everyone who had ever known and loved Bart. No wonder, then, that the Rogues were so hated.

The pallor was soon broken by the sound of footsteps coming down the stairway to the cave. The six youths looked to the stairway to see two young men coming to join them. The one in the lead was a dark-haired boy in short-sleeved black with a red stripe extending from a vaguely birdlike golden symbol across his chest. A black cape with feather-like scallops covered his shoulders and a vaguely birdlike domino mask covered his eyes. The one following was a brown-haired boy wearing a red coat held on by an S-shield buckle over a skintight blue suit.

The two young men were Damien Wayne and Chris Kent, the latest to take the names of Robin and Superboy. Damien, the bastard son (quite literally) of the deceased original Batman and heir to the legacies of both Robin and Batman, gazed down at his fellow young heroes with his customary steely expression. Chris, the adopted son of Superman and the biological son of the would-be Kryptonian dictator known as General Zod, looked over Damien's shoulder – easily done since he was taller than Damien – and smiled at his fellows.

"What are we here for?" Damien asked, cutting to the chase.

"Damien," Lian answered. "Still a rude little punk. Didn't your father teach you any manners?"

"I don't have a father," Damien snapped.

"Lian, give it a rest," Mar'i said.

Lian let out an irritated breath. "I don't see why you're defending him."

"Because I understand what he's been through," Mar'i answered. "What he's still going through."

"Your sympathy is quite touching," Damien sneered. "Now what the f#$ are we here for?"

"One thing I always liked about you, Dame," Iris remarked. "You get straight to the point."

"We're re-forming the Titans," Lian said.

"The Titans?" Chris echoed.

"Yes," Lian confirmed.

"Why a cave?" Jai asked. "What about the big T-Tower?"

"Too obvious," Mar'i replied. "It'd be an open invitation to our enemies. A cave is better for what we have in mind."

"And what do you have in mind?" Iris inquired.

"There are times . . . when we don't want to be with our parents," Lian answered. "When we just wanna be with people our own age. Not just people our own age, but people our own age who understand what we're going through."

"Sounds all right," Cerdian said. "Besides . . ." He looked at Lian. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too, Ian," Lian responded.

Chris gently placed a hand on Damien's shoulder. To the surprise of anyone who didn't know Damien all that well, Damien didn't shrug Chris's shoulder off. "You envy them, don't you?"

"Would I have to kill you if I said 'yes'?"

Chris chuckled. "That's why Uncle Dick keeps the Kryptonite, doesn't he?"

Damien rolled his eyes beneath the mask. "Don't joke about that."

"You might need it someday," Chris insisted, completely serious this time. "In case . . ."

"It won't come to that," Damien whispered. "I won't let it."

"You two look cozy," Lian remarked, looking at Chris and Damien out of the corner of her eye.

"Shut up," Damien snarled.

"You first," Lian retorted.

"Do you two have to pointlessly antagonize each other?" Jai asked. "Someone who watched too many romantic comedies would be convinced you secretly wanted to shag."

"Me? With him?" Lian asked derisively. "That'll be the day."

"Like I'd touch you with a ten-foot pole," Damien added.

"Just saying . . ." Jai remarked nonchalantly.

"If you don't want him, I'll take him . . ." Olivia purred, black-painted lips curled in a wicked smile. A slightly evil chortle escaped those lips.

Mar'i stared at Olivia, almost as though she could burn a hole through the blonde. "Jealous?" Iris whispered, having sidled over to the much taller girl.

"Yeah," Mar'i admitted.

"Why don't you go for him?" Iris questioned. "Or do you think Chris is better for him?"

Mar'i raised a slim black eyebrow at Iris. "Huh?"

"Just saying . . ." Iris answered.

"You sound like Jai," Mar'i mused.

Iris groaned. "Aw, man . . ."

Mar'i laughed. "It's ok. Jai isn't such a bad guy."

"Easy for you to say," Iris grumbled. "You don't live with him."

Just then, the two young women heard Jai shout, "I heard that! And by the way, I'm not the one who leaves their toenail clippings all over the table!"

Iris growled. "Hey! I thought we weren't going to talk about that!"

Lian snickered slightly. "You two are funny."

* * *

End Notes: That's the first chapter of Titans: Legacies. The second chapter will be coming soon enough, and that's where the new Titans go up against Deathstroke's new team. In the meantime, you will also see the new Titans' civilian lives and such and you will see what it means for each of these characters to take on a legacy. At some point, you'll also see why Mar'i and Damien are so close, the origins of Damien and Lian's animosity, the beginnings of Chris and Damien's friendship, how Olivia got to her current physical age, and more. In the meantime, let me know what you think of this first installment.


	2. Striking Antitheses

"Titans: Legacies"

Chapter 2: "Striking Antitheses"

Disclaimer: The characters seen here largely belong to DC Comics, with a few created by me. The one thing I purely own is this story.

Author's note: Here comes the second chapter of this story, which will focus on the new Titans' personal and heroic lives before Deathstroke makes his move. The question is, however, just what does Deathstroke really want? You'll find that out when I'm good and ready for you to find out. In the meantime, on with the story.

* * *

Damien Wayne began another day at Marion Grange Preparatory School, dressed in the standard uniform of the school. Said uniform was a dark blue blazer over a white dress shirt with black tie and dark gray pants with black dress shoes. Damien didn't much enjoy the uniform, nor did he enjoy what came with it. He didn't enjoy being surrounded by spoiled brats who felt entitled to whatever they desired just because of who their fathers – or mothers – were. He didn't enjoy the attention of the girls who attended the school with him; vapid whores they all were.

Damien was what one would call a loner, someone who could always be found sitting at the lunch table by himself, someone who could always be found a little separate from everyone else. Damien didn't mind that very much; it allowed him peace and quiet. Another thing that allowed him peace and quiet was his reputation.

Damien Wayne had a reputation as a vicious son of a bitch liable to kill someone just for breathing wrong in his presence. That was not too far from the truth, although he was able to restrain himself most of the time. The times that he didn't restrain himself were times in which he was just in a very bad mood already and some presumptuous jerk had pushed him over the edge. Said presumptuous jerk would usually end up not being able to return to class for a few periods due to the medical attention he needed.

There was one person, though, who reached out to him, who tried to pull him out of his shell. That person was Mar'i Grayson, who also attended the school with him. They didn't see each other too often, as Damien was a senior and Mar'i was a sophomore, but whenever lunchtime came around, Mar'i would invite him to sit with her.

Mar'i was his exact opposite, beautiful, vivacious, and open. She easily charmed boys and girls alike, not necessarily in the romantic sense, but it was almost impossible to hate her if one knew her. Pretty much every teenage boy in the school wanted to date her – or just sleep with her – and a lot of teenage girls wanted to be friends with her. Mar'i was rather on the famous side, being the daughter of an extraterrestrial supermodel-slash-superhero and the first scion of Bruce Wayne and also being a superhero herself.

That was another difference between Damien and Mar'i. Mar'i proudly acknowledged both her human and alien roots and didn't build walls around her heart. Even now, Damien could see her surrounded by girls and boys alike, sitting with them, laughing with them, exchanging stories and advice with them. He sighed enviously; she just had so much love and joy in her that it was almost impossible to keep hidden.

_If only I could be like that,_ he mused almost ruefully.

Just then, he saw Mar'i waving to him. Damien stood from his lonely table and walked over to Mar'i's table, taking a spare seat wedged between a bespectacled, lanky boy and a small, almost boyishly built girl. He vaguely knew them; the boy was Danny and the girl was Mickey. He grunted out a brief greeting.

"Hey, Damien," Mickey greeted with a slight blush.

Damien was not blind to his own physical attractiveness; he knew he was a lust object for a lot of the girls in the school. He also knew that Mar'i was a lust object for a lot of the boys in the school. Fortunately for them, many of the boys that found their way into Mar'i's social circle saw her as more than just a lust object. Fortunate for them, as Damien would show them just how vicious he could truly be if he thought they had any untoward intentions where Mar'i was concerned.

She was his sister, his kindred, the one person who truly understood and accepted him. His so-called brothers, Dick and Tim, tried their best, but they had never truly accepted him; they saw him as an encroachment on their legacy. He knew that, he saw it brewing in their eyes whenever they looked at him.

That was why he needed the Titans, whether he would ever say it out loud or not. He needed to be around people who could acknowledge him as something other than Bruce Wayne's bastard child, other than an unwanted adjunct to the legacy of Batman.

"Damien?" Mar'i asked.

"Yeah, I'm listening," Damien grunted. He caught the scent of damp clay, somewhere at the table where he was sitting. He gave seemingly cursory looks at the others sitting with him and Mar'i, trying to deduce who was giving off that clay scent. He locked eyes with one of them. "I'd like to speak to you in private."

"Uh, sure . . ." Mickey replied with a more vivid blush. She stood first, Damien rising with her and walking away with her. As they walked out of the cafeteria, Damien spared a brief look of warning at Mar'i.

* * *

Once out in the hall, Mickey turned to Damien. "What is it, Damien?"

"This," Damien replied and punched her as hard as he could. Unsurprisingly, her face seemed to absorb the blow, actually sucking his fist in as though he had just hit clay. When he pulled his hand back, he saw wet clay on his fingers. "Clayface. You might as well show your real face."

"No fooling you, is there?" Clayface retorted as he shifted into his true form of a humanoid mass of clay. "Robin. Or can I call you Damien?"

Damien snarled and pulled out the kris he kept hidden in his blazer, the pockets of which had been lined with a mesh that blocked metal detectors. Clayface sharpened his appendages into solid blades, as ready to fight as Damien was. "Come on, then, pretty boy. Let's do this."

Damien made the first move, slashing at Clayface with his kris. Clayface blocked the blade by shifting one of his appendages into a shield, only for Damien to somersault over him and kick him in the back of the head. Unfortunately, Clayface shifted his mass to easily absorb the kick and suck Damien inside. Damien used his kris to cut himself free and rolled on the floor, springing to his feet despite the clay staining his pants leg and shoe.

"What are you doing here?" Damien asked. "How did you even know to come here? Where's the real Mickey?"

"So many questions," Clayface replied mockingly. "Tell you what, how about I answer them after you're dead!"

"You first," Damien retorted with a vicious grin.

* * *

Back in the cafeteria, Mar'i could hear the sounds of battle from the hallway. "I'm gonna check up on Damien and Mickey," she said to her friends.

"Sure," Danny said.

Mar'i left her table and went out into the hallway, only to find Damien on the losing end of a battle with Clayface. Her hands glowed with violet energy and she fired a double-fisted starbolt at the shape-shifter. Damien, fortunately, had gotten out of the way just before the starbolt hit Clayface, the blast punching a large hole through Clayface's midsection.

"What happened?" Mar'i asked.

"Clayface was disguised as Mickey," Damien replied. "And somehow, he knows who I am."

"What are you doing here?" Mar'i asked the regenerating Clayface.

"I'm just here to take you two Bat-brats down," Clayface answered, stretching his arms out as bludgeons aimed for Mar'i. Mar'i met Clayface's bludgeoning arms with her own fists and Clayface's arms fell apart from the force of Mar'i's blow. Of course, Clayface just regenerated himself again. "Ok, bitch, you're dead!"

Clayface transformed himself into a fast-moving liquid mass, aimed at Mar'i, but Mar'i levitated above his grasp and fired a starbolt at him. The heat from the starbolt turned Clayface from quasi-liquid to barely coherent and semidry mud. Mar'i floated over to Damien, landing next to him with a questioning expression.

"How did he know to come here?" she asked.

"I don't know," Damien replied. "But I'm going to find out."

"You mean _we're_ going to find out," Mar'i corrected.

Damien shrugged. "Same difference."

As they were talking, Clayface was reconstituting himself. Damien noticed that reconstitution out of the corner of his eye. "Too bad we don't have any ice capsules. I was barely able to get my kris in here."

"I have an idea," Mar'i said, firing a starbolt at the sprinkler on the ceiling. The intense heat from the starbolt activated the sprinkler and water sprayed forth onto Clayface's re-forming mass, trapping him unless he could slither away. Slither away he did, pursued by water spraying from the sprinklers that Mar'i activated with her starbolts. Finally, he just fled the school.

"Now we have to find out where he might be keeping Mickey," Damien said.

They exited the school building together, ready to go find Mickey when Mar'i's supersensitive ears heard a blade cutting through the air. She ducked, as did Damien, and the two jumped back to sight their assailant, a small young woman clad in black with blue chain-mesh and wearing a bisected black-and-blue mask. The costumed woman wielded a sharp katana and her stance signaled that she was more than ready to fight.

"Who are you?" Mar'i asked.

"Executrix," the costumed woman replied, just before she slashed at Mar'i with inhuman speed. Mar'i dodged the swing and flipped backward to kick Executrix's sword arm. Executrix took the blow and redirected the momentum from Mar'i's kick into a 360-degree spin that finished with her thrusting her sword at Damien, who blocked with his kris.

* * *

Sunstone High School, Olivia Queen sat in her AP Literature class and listened to the discussion of Dante's _Inferno._ It wasn't as though she couldn't follow along or participate; she simply didn't feel like it at the moment. In truth, she found it rather boring, although she supposed her dad would have loved it. Then again, her dad at her age – physical age – hadn't much cared about books like this.

The part of Olivia that psychologically remained a child wanted to go outside and play. Of course, her sense of discipline prevented her from leaving the classroom in order to play. Thus, she sat in the classroom and continued to listen to the class discussion until someone called her name.

"Miss Queen?" the teacher asked.

"Yes?" Olivia replied.

"Could you tell us – as succinctly as possible – why there is a Limbo in Dante's vision of hell?" the teacher asked.

Olivia thought about it, her mind processing the instruction with inhuman speed. She answered the question tersely. "There's a Limbo in Dante's interpretation of hell because he didn't think anyone who wasn't baptized or who didn't believe in the Christian God deserved to be in heaven. At the same time, he didn't think they deserved to go to hell because of that; they were mostly innocent people. Thus, there's a Limbo for them, a place where they are simply permanently isolated from God instead of being tortured."

"All right," the teacher said. "Not bad."

After the class was over, the students quietly filed out. As Olivia was about to leave with the other students, the teacher called her name. Olivia turned to acknowledge the teacher. "Yes, Mr. Briscoe?"

"I'd like to talk to you about your work here," Mr. Briscoe replied.

"Is there something wrong?" Olivia asked.

"No," Mr. Briscoe replied. "To the contrary; you are by far one of the most exemplary students I've had this year."

Olivia blushed. "Thank you."

"I was wondering, if you'd like a little private instruction," Mr. Briscoe suggested. "Some one-on-one tutoring."

"Thank you, but I don't think I need it," Olivia said.

"Oh, it's not going to be with me," Mr. Briscoe explained. "It'll be with a student-teacher I have as one of my assistants. You'll like her."

Olivia breathed out a sigh of relief. She'd almost been worried that Mr. Briscoe intended to molest her or something. Not that she'd have been surprised by that; she wasn't bad-looking by any means and Mr. Briscoe was kind of handsome for a middle-aged man. It was still good, though, that she'd have someone closer to her own age to privately instruct her.

"Ok, you can go now," Mr. Briscoe said.

"Thanks," Olivia answered. "Bye, Mr. Briscoe." She turned on her heel and walked out of the classroom, headed for her locker so that she could prepare for her next class.

Later on, Olivia was enjoying her lunch in the courtyard situated just outside of the school building. She didn't have a care in the world, except for the fact that she really, really wished she wasn't in school right then. It was rather boring, having to sit still in class and listen to people talk. Of course, it wasn't boring when she was sitting still in the T-Cave and listening to Mar'i talk; Mar'i's voice had that musical quality that made Olivia hang on every word the half-Tamaranean girl spoke.

Olivia was so caught up in her thoughts about Mar'i that she almost didn't notice the arrow that was flying at her. Emphasis on "almost," as her eyes caught the arrow speeding at her and her reflexes snapped into action a split second later, her hand gripping the shaft of the arrow before the head could embed itself in her chest, her eye, or her head. She examined the arrow, finding it to be incredibly old-fashioned on the surface.

She dodged another arrow that was fired at her by jumping up into a higher branch of the tree she was sitting under. She scanned her surroundings, magnifying her vision so that she could track the source of the arrows being fired at her. She spotted someone, a young man, in skintight black with a dragon print on one side of his body and armed with a bow and arrow.

Olivia bounded out of the tree and sped in the archer's direction. She wasn't a speedster by any means, but she could run fast enough to outrun a race car. She could handle this guy who was trying to kill her, whoever he was. She moved so fast that she was a blur to onlookers, crossing the distance to her would-be assassin within seconds.

"Who are you?" she asked, standing on top of the atrium where he had calmly sniped her.

"Hello, sister," the assassin archer greeted.

"Sister? What are you talking about?"

"You mean Dad didn't tell you?" The assassin archer chuckled. "Of course he wouldn't tell you. So happy with his little Canary. He probably wants to forget that I was ever conceived, let alone born."

Olivia glared. "What are you talking about?"

"You'll have to ask him. For now, call me Oni."

"I don't care what you call yourself; you're going down." Olivia threw a fast punch, only for Oni to duck and twist into position to throw a punch that caught her in the stomach. Olivia took the blow without flinching and grabbed Oni's wrist, using it as leverage to throw him over her shoulder. Oni flipped in midair and landed on his feet behind her, throwing another punch that Olivia sidestepped, the blonde sweeping her leg out to trip him. The dark-haired young man jumped over her leg and launched into a flying kick that Olivia caught, using his momentum to throw him to the edge of the atrium roof.

Oni quickly got back on his feet and swiftly nocked and released an arrow from his bow, Olivia catching the arrow with superhuman reflexes. She discarded the arrow, only to barely dodge another one that nearly grazed her eye. She threw herself into a forward handspring that ended in a kick to Oni's chest. Oni took the kick despite the rattle to his ribcage and grabbed Olivia's ankles, throwing her over the edge of the atrium. Olivia simply flipped backward in her descent and landed gracefully on the ground.

Oni jumped down after her, rapidly firing arrows at her as he descended. Olivia dodged and caught the arrows, but Oni was surprisingly fast for a non-augmented human and his arrows were getting dangerously close to striking her. Within her, the weaponized symbiote called Excalibur awoke. Olivia was its host and master, and it would not allow her to come to harm.

Without Olivia really thinking about it, Excalibur began to cover Olivia, her clothes slowly being torn away by a silvery quasi-organic metal covering. When it was over, her arms, shoulders, and sides were covered in the organic metal carapace that was the material representation of Excalibur. The covering had shredded Olivia's shirt to the point that it was little more than a glorified tube top, but that was not the farthest extent of the bio-metal sheath. Excalibur had also formed a protective web around Olivia's legs, also shredding her pants until they were little more than daisy dukes.

The biomechanical substance had also covered the sides of Olivia's neck and face, and her eyes had turned completely black with gold circuit-like patterns surrounding what might have been her pupils. Olivia's inhuman eyes landed upon Oni with a look of steely determination. Oni just chuckled.

"So this is your power," he remarked. "I'll enjoy testing myself against you."

Olivia lunged at Oni so quickly that to a normal human's eyes, she might as well have vanished. Oni, however, had special ocular grafts that sharpened his sight enough to detect fast-moving targets, allowing him to somewhat keep up with Olivia. Of course, it was useless to have enhanced perception of an opponent's moves if one was not fast enough to match those moves.

Such was what Oni discovered when Olivia tagged him with a vicious palm thrust, nearly caving in his sternum. The force of the blow propelled Oni backward, only for Olivia to leap over him and deliver a spine-crunching kick to his back. Oni collapsed on his front, only to roll over and quickly nock and release an arrow at Olivia, who caught the arrow and threw it aside contemptuously. Another arrow flew at Olivia, this time hitting her in the stomach, just above her navel.

To Oni's surprise, Olivia smiled at him, grabbing the protruding shaft and pulling the arrow out of her. The wound only bled a little before sealing up and closing. She then snapped the arrow in two, revealing sparking circuitry from either broken end of the arrow. She pointed her hand at Oni and the bio-metal covering it formed into a sword blade.

"I can do that, too," Oni retorted, a blade popping out of his forearm.

"Then let's do it," Olivia challenged.

The two children of Oliver Queen, or so Oni purported himself to be, battled with their blades. Olivia proved to be the faster and stronger of the two, overwhelming Oni. Of course, Oni had sheer determination on his side, but he would have to rethink his strategy. A direct fight with a superhuman opponent such as Olivia Queen was not necessarily a good idea for a non-powered fighter such as Oni. Then again . . . he had backup.

As Oni and Olivia fought, Olivia was suddenly impaled in the shoulder by an arrow, the head of which detonated inside her. The explosion brutally separated her arm from the rest of her body and Olivia collapsed to the ground, bleeding profusely from the stump to which her arm was formerly attached. Olivia looked up, her eyes wild with pain and rage, wanting to know where the attack had come from.

"Quincy," Oni greeted tersely.

The other archer, a pale, darkly garbed young man, mock saluted Oni from his position, holding a high-tech chrome-plated bow. He jumped out of the tree in which he'd been hiding and walked up to his partner. "I suppose that takes care of this bitch."

"Now for the other one," Oni answered.

"If you mean Lian . . ." Olivia growled, her voice ragged. ". . . you're not getting anywhere near her."

Olivia had forced herself to her feet with just one arm to help her. She had also picked up her severed arm and held it to the stump of her shoulder, the biomechanical fibers that substantiated Excalibur reconnecting her arm to her shoulder. Despite the physical reconnection, the harder task of neural and synaptic reconnection was still in progress, thus impeding Olivia's ability to use that arm. It didn't matter; she'd just use her one working arm and her legs to their utmost capability.

* * *

In Atlantis, Cerdian was practicing with his magic. He had already learned how to form psychic vectors that acted as extra limbs, effectively mimicking telekinesis. He also knew how to generate mystical force and shape it into a melee weapon, although he typically used it as a last resort, for he typically chose the form of a blade and the blade was capable of killing. He knew how to perceive the flow of magic through the Eye of the Clear, a genetic trait passed on to him by his father. Despite this, he still had so much to learn, but then he was only 14 in surface world years. In ten years, he'd probably be even better.

As he practiced, Cerdian sensed a disturbance. It was a blip of dark magic moving quickly and stealthily, approaching his position. He didn't recognize the source, but then he hadn't been exposed to dark magic very often. He went on his guard, waiting for the source of dark magic to come to him. When it did, he was rather surprised.

"Lian?" Cerdian asked.

It certainly looked like Lian. Same curly shoulder-length red hair, same jade crystal eyes, same feline physique, same "classy tease" style of dressing, but . . . it wasn't her. He could tell by the eyes, those eyes that had an unnatural hardness and coldness in them. That wasn't Lian. Not Lian at all.

"You're not Lian," he spat. "Lian doesn't know any magic, and certainly not dark magic of Olympian origin."

The false Lian laughed. "No fooling you, is there?" She shifted into her true form, a girl with long lavender hair and violet eyes. She was dressed in an outfit that seemed to be a hybrid of Diana's Wonder Woman costume and Cassie Sandsmark's Wonder Girl costume prior to Kon-El's death, but the colors were amethyst and silver instead of ruby and gold.

"Who are you?" Cerdian asked.

"My name's Lyta," the "Dark Wonder Girl" replied. "I'm the daughter of Circe and Ares and I've inherited the sum total of their powers. And depending on how long you last with me, I might be inclined to show you mercy."

"I don't know how you got in here, but you're not going to be staying." Cerdian extended twin telekinetic vectors at Lyta as blades, only for Lyta to seemingly disappear and reappear behind Cerdian, who whirled around in a seemingly futile attempt to block her attack. While Lyta's punch still sent Cerdian flying through the wall and into the sea outside, it didn't do nearly as much damage as she was probably expecting. Cerdian stopped his uncontrolled propulsion and spotted Lyta flying through the water to attack him again. This time, Cerdian was ready and evaded her attack, moving behind her and grabbing her arm to twist it behind her back.

"Getting rough with me already?" Lyta taunted. "What would your girlfriend think?"

Cerdian didn't allow himself to be distracted, catching Lyta's other arm as she swept it backward to strike him and twisting that one behind her back as well. "This is my territory."

"I forgot," Lyta remarked. "You're even stronger in the water than you are on land." She chuckled. "But not as strong as I am."

With a burst of mystically fueled telekinetic force, Lyta forced Cerdian off her, Cerdian wrapping himself in telekinetic vectors to protect himself from the full power of Lyta's assault. He unwrapped himself and shot the vectors at Lyta to act as restraints and as attacking instruments. Lyta swam higher into the water, attempting to avoid the vectors, but the vectors increased their speed to the point that two managed to grab her ankles.

Lyta shot a bolt of mystical lightning at Cerdian, only for Cerdian to shield himself with more vectors. More of his vectors began to wrap around Lyta, binding her as surely as gauze wrappings wound bind a mummy. Lyta struggled fiercely to free herself and with a cry of determined rage, she burst loose, diving into an attack on Cerdian that the Atlantean mage caught, throwing her some distance away. Lyta recovered quickly and charged her hand with mystical lightning, using the current to enhance her already prodigious speed even further and launch herself into a killing strike on Cerdian.

Cerdian summoned his force blade and dived at Lyta. It all came down to who was the faster and more precise of the two . . . and to sheer luck. Depending on how those three factors played out for each of them, one would still be alive and the other would be incapacitated, if not fatally so.

In one of those rather screwy quirks of fate, Cerdian and Lyta ended up stabbing each other. Lyta's mystical lightning penetrated Cerdian's iron-like flesh and left a gaping wound somewhere between his shoulder and his heart. Cerdian's force blade perforated Lyta's torso somewhere between her ribcage and her navel. Both mystically oriented fighters were bleeding profusely from the wounds they had dealt each other.

Lyta found it in herself to laugh. "You hurt me . . . you hurt me after all. I suppose you're not so worthless now."

Cerdian glared. "I don't see what's so funny."

Lyta glided to Cerdian and pulled him into an embrace. Cerdian struggled in her grip, but he was losing so much blood . . . getting woozy. Lyta smiled and brought her head to his wound, lapping up the escaping blood. Oddly enough, Lyta's saliva acted as a cauterizing agent, stopping the wound from bleeding any further, but that didn't necessarily mean Cerdian was healed. She lifted her head and pulled Cerdian into a deep kiss, muffling Cerdian's screams of pain as her power began to work on him.

She broke the kiss, leaving Cerdian to drift through the sea in agony as she flew back up to the surface. When he recovered, he would be hers . . . and there would be nothing that piddling wannabe Artemis could do about it. Besides, she needed a boyfriend, anyway, and if her father didn't like it, then he could take his opinion and shove it. If Deathstroke didn't like her particular method of neutralizing a Titan, he could shove it, too.

* * *

End Notes: All right, the assault of the Reverse-Titans has begun. Mar'i and Damien managed to take out Clayface, but now they have to deal with Executrix. Olivia has her hands full with the dark archers Oni and Quincy, and Cerdian's been taken out by Lyta, although it seems Lyta has more in mind than that. If you want to see how they and the other Titans do against their foes, you'll have to wait for chapter 3. In the meantime, let me know what you thought of this.


	3. Angel Blaze, Demon Storm

"Titans: Legacies"

Chapter 3: "Angel Blaze, Demon Storm"

Disclaimer: With the exception of Executrix, Quincy, Savitrix, and Ultrawoman, the notable characters that appear here are the creative property of DC Comics. I only own this story.

Author's note: So far, it seems that the new Titans are in some very dire straits. Mar'i and Damien have been attacked by Clayface and Executrix, Olivia's taking on Oni and Quincy with only one working arm, and Cerdian's seemingly out for the count thanks to Lyta. Is that all there is to it, or will the other Titans suffer similar assaults? I think you know the answer to that question already, but to see it for yourselves, read on.

* * *

Garth found Cerdian drifting through the sea and trailing blood. He quickly swam to Cerdian and picked him up, only to be stung when he touched his son. Fighting the stinging sensation, he swam with Cerdian to Atlantis's nearest medical facility. Once inside, the healers carried Cerdian away, only to also be stung by touching him. In spite of that, they managed to carry him off for medical aid.

Garth followed, beside himself with twinned worry and terror. He had no idea who had left Cerdian in his present condition, nor did he know if Cerdian would be all right. However, he did recognize the magic that had harmed his son; it felt Olympian, only twisted and darkened. Now came the hard part: informing Dolphin of what had befallen their son.

* * *

On the surface, in the city of Metropolis, a brown-haired teenage boy wearing sunglasses was just leaving school for the day. It was not an especially sunny day, but he wore the sunglasses almost every time he went out during the day, and even when he went into well-lit areas at night. Why would he need sunglasses almost constantly? As he told everyone else who wasn't in on his not-so-little secret, his eyes were extremely photosensitive, too much so for him not to wear protective glasses.

"Hey, Chris!" a voice shouted at him.

Christopher Kent turned around and acknowledged the speaker. "Hey, Pat."

Pat jogged toward him, all gangly limbs and messy hair, stopping only once he was in front of him and breathing heavily. "You . . . wanna study . . . with me . . . later?"

Just as Chris was about to answer that question, his hypersensitive ears heard an explosion in the distance. Chris turned and concentrated his vision, seeing farther than any human could possibly see. He saw . . . a girl in a black leather half-jacket with a "U"-shield buckle closing it over a bikini top and short shorts with knee-high laced boots. She emitted intense heat from her eyes, exploding cars, trucks, and generally anything else combustible.

"Rain check," Chris said to Pat. "I'll see you later." Without another word, he disappeared into the crowd and faded into a more inconspicuous area. From there, a blur of blue and red took off into the air and shot through it at high velocity. This blur, if anyone could see it clearly, would be a teenage boy in a red coat buckled by an "S"-shield over a skintight blue suit. This blur was Superboy . . . known in civilian guise as Chris Kent.

Superboy made it to the scene of the destruction within only a few seconds, landing before the leather-clad girl. "Why are you doing this? Who are you?"

"Hey there, cutie," the girl greeted, leering. "Call me Ultrawoman."

"You didn't answer my first question," Superboy retorted.

"To get you out here," Ultrawoman replied. "Lor-Zod."

Superboy gasped in shock. "How do you know about that?"

Ultrawoman chuckled. "There's not much about you I don't know." She turned away from Superboy so that her profile was facing him and challengingly beckoned him over.

Superboy lunged at her for a high-speed attack, only for Ultrawoman to catch his outstretched arm and casually throw him down the street. Superboy recovered his footing, only for Ultrawoman to emerge in front of him and sock him hard enough in the jaw to almost dislocate it. The blow sent Superboy flying again, crashing through several skyscrapers. When he came out on the other side, Ultrawoman emerged behind him and kicked him in the back, sending him flying again in the opposite direction.

Superboy crashed into the street, the impact producing a crater. Just as he brought himself back to his feet, Ultrawoman dive-bombed him with her own body. Brutally knocking Superboy into the ground, Ultrawoman battered him with vicious high-speed punches before he grabbed one of her fists and threw her off him. Undeterred, she flipped in midair and landed on her feet as Superboy forced himself out of the crater.

"Is that all you've got?" Ultrawoman asked derisively.

"You haven't even seen all I've got yet," Superboy retorted.

Ultrawoman smirked. "Show me, then."

Superboy flew at her again with an outstretched fist, only for Ultrawoman to grab his wrist, spin with him at inhuman speed, and throw him into the air. Ultrawoman took off into the air after him, throwing a punch that might have snapped his neck if he hadn't used his speed to dodge at the last second. He attempted to attack her again, only for her to easily block his punch and trap his body with hers. Once that was accomplished, she dropped to the ground at high velocity, slamming him into the street, creating a crater, and generating a sonic boom.

Ultrawoman removed herself from the crater, leaving behind a battered Superboy. "Hey . . ." she heard his voice growl from behind her. "I'm not . . . _done!!_"

With a surprising burst of speed for one so badly battered, Superboy emerged in front of her and kicked her in her exposed stomach. The kick sent her flying into the air, but she flipped in the air and recovered her footing, such as it was. When she did that, Superboy was already flying up toward her to press his advantage. She showed him the foolishness – in her mind – of believing he had any advantage over her, mainly by backhanding him hard enough to send him crashing down to the street again. Superboy tumbled down the street, stopping in a ruined heap of blue and red.

While Superboy had been tumbling down the street, Ultrawoman was walking toward him unhurriedly. For her, it wasn't necessary to rush; Superboy would fall to her one way or another. Once she reached him, she grabbed him by his "S"-shield buckle and began punching him at super-speed. This time, Superboy was too battered to do much resisting and her blows were coming too fast for him to avoid. Once she was done thrashing him, she threw him aside like a broken doll.

"Is that all you had?" Ultrawoman asked mockingly. "Such a shame."

Superboy forced himself to his feet and shot forth a sustained blast of heat vision that Ultrawoman had to cross her arms to block. When it was over, her arms were singed, as was her stomach. To his surprise, she laughed with psychotic merriment. "Finally! This just might be fun after all!"

"You call this fun?!" Superboy asked furiously.

"Yes," Ultrawoman replied unabashedly.

With an enraged scream, Superboy flew at Ultrawoman with extreme superhuman speed, catching her with a brutal kick to the jaw. Ultrawoman took the kick as an opportunity to grab him by the ankle and throw him again. Superboy managed to control his aerial movement and launched himself at Ultrawoman again, only to be grabbed and thrown again. Superboy planted his hand on the ground and performed a backward handspring to reassert control over his movements. He landed on the street, just as Ultrawoman came at him again.

This time, Superboy grabbed her fist, blocking her attack, and leveraged her momentum into an overhead throw. Ultrawoman performed a multiple somersault and came down with a flying kick that knocked a tooth, along with some blood, out of Superboy's mouth. Superboy crashed into the ground from the sheer force of the kick, but got up again quickly, only to discover something surprising.

There was a crystalline shard, about three inches long, protruding from his forearm. "What the hell?!" he uttered, shocked.

"Did I #$& you up that badly?" Ultrawoman asked. "You got bones sticking out of your body now? How freaking fragile."

Superboy didn't think the crystalline shard was any part of his skeletal structure, but something very odd was going on here. He didn't have time to meditate on it, though, as Ultrawoman was coming to attack him again. The crystalline shard seemed to retract into his skin, only to come out again from his wrist along with two more from the backs of his hands.

_What is happening to me?!_ Superboy wondered. He thrust his arm out to defend himself from Ultrawoman's assault, only to impale her with the crystalline shards coming out of his wrist and fist. Ultrawoman coughed up blood, but didn't otherwise seem too badly affected. With a brutal palm thrust, she sent Superboy flying backward down the street. Ultrawoman super-sped behind him and delivered a spine-crunching knee-jab to his back, knocking him to the ground.

"Damn it," he muttered to himself. No matter what he did, even with the crystalline protrusions, Ultrawoman seemed damned near unstoppable. He rose to his feet, despite the pain in his back, and stretched, cracking his vertebrae back into their proper positions.

"Not bad," Ultrawoman remarked from behind him. Before Superboy could react in time, Ultrawoman grabbed him by the arm, twisted it behind his back, and slammed him face-first into the ground while holding his head with her other hand. "But utterly weak compared to me. Absolutely, utterly weak. And I despise weakness."

Almost as an automatic defense mechanism, a multitude of crystalline spikes sprouted from Superboy's prone body, impaling Ultrawoman. Superboy rolled over, as Ultrawoman slid off his spikes, lubricated by her own blood. The crystalline spikes retracted into his body and he rose to his feet, looking at Ultrawoman's prostrate frame. There were deep, wide punctures all over her body, oozing the scarlet life-giving fluid that he knew all too well. As he looked closer, he saw those punctures closing rapidly, the blood almost ceasing to flow. Her eyes opened, a demonically glittering blue, and she sprang to her feet.

"Hah, hah!" she crowed. "Excellent comeback!"

"How do you just keep getting up like that?" a horrified Superboy wondered. "What are you?"

Ultrawoman leered cruelly at Superboy. "What's the matter, baby? Can't take it?"

"You didn't answer my question," Superboy growled.

"Because I like it," Ultrawoman replied. "I like it when people hurt me. I like it when I hurt them. Both dealing pain and taking pain makes me a happy woman."

"What kind of sicko are you?!" Superboy asked, shocked.

"Oh, don't knock it till you've tried it!" Ultrawoman retorted sharply, firing a heat vision blast, which Superboy barely dodged. As it turned out, the heat vision attack was a feint to distract Superboy from Ultrawoman's next attack, which she had begun executing a mere nanosecond after the heat blast exited her eyes. As Superboy was dodging the heat ray Ultrawoman had fired at him, Ultrawoman had moved slightly under the evading Superboy and now swung a leg up for a hard kick that sent Superboy into an uncontrolled, speedy ascent through the sky. Ultrawoman flew up at high speed, moving ahead of Superboy, and slammed a two-handed fist on his back, turning his ascent into a brutal descent.

She did this for five minutes, knocking him down only to speed below him and knock him back up, then speeding above him to knock him down again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Superboy rolled over in midair after Ultrawoman had knocked him down for the penultimate time and charged up a blast of heat vision. Just as he was about to fire, he suddenly found himself in a strange realm – one he vaguely recognized as the Phantom Zone – just for a split second, and then he was in the Batcave, coughing up blood onto the floor of the cave.

* * *

A young man, no older than his late twenties at most, stepped into the cave. He was clad mostly in black with red coloring his shoulders and extending down his torso to stop in a triangular point. A stylized black bat symbol filled the red triangle and red gauntlets encased his hands and half his forearms. A gray utility belt and armored black boots, along with a sharp-edged red domino mask, completed the costume.

This was Tim Drake, onetime Robin and now calling himself Paladin. Tim spotted the brutalized and almost mutilated Superboy and sped over to his side, rolling him over to get a good look at him. "Chris. Who did this to you?"

Superboy coughed, blood in that cough. "It was Ultrawoman."

"Ultrawoman?" Paladin echoed.

"She has powers like mine. She knows who I am . . . who I used to be." He coughed again. "And I couldn't do jack to stop her."

"I'll get you to Dr. Mid-Nite," Paladin said. He picked up Superboy and carried him into the League-issued transporter, inserting the coordinates for the Justice Society's headquarters. Once those coordinates were programmed in, Paladin activated the transporter, beaming himself and Superboy into the main hall of the Justice Society's base.

"Paladin," Wildcat, Tom Bronson, greeted. His keen nose detected the scent of blood . . . nonhuman blood. He looked at the beaten heap in Paladin's arms. "Superboy?"

"There's some kind of 'Ultrawoman' out there," Paladin explained tersely. "She did this to him."

"I'll take him to Dr. Mid-Nite," Wildcat said.

Paladin looked at the were-cat. "No thanks. I'll do it. I'd prefer to move him as little as possible." He moved briskly yet deliberately, trying not to do too much damage to Superboy. He knew enough about Kryptonian physiology from his interactions with Superman, the original Superboy (Paladin fought back a tear at the thought of Conner), and Supergirl-turned-Superwoman to know that this Superboy's body was working overtime to heal him. Of course, that healing process needed to be guided in the case of severe injuries or else the body would be permanently impaired due to imperfect healing.

Paladin didn't even wait for Dr. Mid-Nite to open the door before barging in. Dr. Mid-Nite would have scolded him for that oversight, if he had not been afraid in any sense for Superboy's life or well-being. As it was, Dr. Mid-Nite gently removed Superboy from Paladin's embrace and set him on the medical cot, unfastening the now-torn red coat and removing it, then cutting open and removing the skintight blue body-glove underneath.

"Give me some room," Dr. Mid-Nite said. "I need to operate fast if I'm going to have a chance of helping him heal right." He looked over at Superboy's wounds, internally shuddering. "What was he dealing with?"

Paladin exited Dr. Mid-Nite's medical room, waiting just a short distance from the door. Soon after, he saw Jay Garrick, garbed in his standard Mercury helmet and Flash costume, walking toward him. "Jay . . ."

"No need, Tim," Jay answered, holding up his hand to stop Paladin from speaking. "Seeing him . . . it's like seeing Conner again, isn't it?"

Paladin stared at Jay, whiteout lenses meeting kindly yet firm blue eyes. "That's twice I couldn't save a Superboy."

"Mid-Nite's the best meta-specialist doctor in the world," Jay said, clapping a reassuring hand on Jay's shoulder. "If anyone can make sure Chris turns out fine, it's him."

Paladin swallowed, then released the breath he'd been holding back. He looked at the hand on his shoulder, then back at Jay. "Thanks."

* * *

In Keystone City, Iris and Jai West were enjoying their between-classes lunches. They each had two platefuls of meals, one spaghetti and one pizza, a third plateful of grapes and sliced apples (at their mother's insistence), and a fourth plateful of cake slices. Yes, it was a staggering amount of calories and carbohydrates and such . . . for a normal human. With the twins' Speed Force-augmented physiological processes, they would be coming back for second helpings, maybe third helpings, too. Such was the blessing and curse of a hyper-accelerated metabolic rate.

The twins quickly finished their lunches, pausing only to wipe their mouths before heading to pick up second helpings. As they were on their way, twin blurs of movement suddenly accosted them. Jai's hyper-accelerated neurotransmitters sped up his senses enough for him to recognize his attacker as a boy somewhat younger than him in black and green. Fortunately, his reflexes were swift enough to keep up with his attacker. Beside him, Iris had sped herself up to keep up with her attacker, a redhead in midnight blue with silver lightning crisscrossing her body.

"Who are you?" Jai asked.

"Inertia," the black-and-green-clad boy replied, sneering. "And you're gonna be dead."

"And you?" Iris asked her attacker.

"Savitrix, goddess of motion," the dark blue-and-silver-clad girl replied.

Inertia snapped his fingers and the kinetic pulse that followed knocked Jai through several walls and out of the dining hall. Jai quickly rolled to his feet, only for Inertia to be on him with super-rapid punches. Jai blocked as many as he could, but Inertia seemed to know what he was doing, as he dropped to sweep his leg out into a low kick meant to trip Jai. Jai let Inertia trip him, but only so he could catch himself with one hand and spin into a low kick. Unfortunately, Inertia turned out to be slightly faster and barely evaded the kick. Jai twisted onto his feet, ready to resume the fight.

Meanwhile, Iris and Savitrix were still fighting at high velocity. Unfortunately for Iris, she had a time limit on how long she could use her speed, as it was produced by turning her kinetic acceleration powers on herself and thus was dangerous to her body if sustained long enough. Hopefully, Iris wouldn't have to keep fighting for that long, but she felt so slow compared to Savitrix, who seemed to be dancing around her attacks.

"What do you want?!" Iris asked.

"For the Church of the Flash to fall, replaced by the Sanctum of Savitar," Savitrix replied.

"You're nuts!" was Iris's retort as she threw herself into a lightning-fast series of punches and kicks. Savitrix blocked them all with a look of disinterest on her face. "How are you doing this?"

"I'm controlling the motion of time relative to myself," Savitrix replied. "You may be fast by human standards, but to me . . . you might as well be crawling through thick mud."

Iris threw another punch at Savitrix, who caught her wrist and used the momentum from Iris's strike to throw her a good distance, further propelled by a kinetic pulse made by snapping her fingers. Iris quickly managed to regain her footing, only for Savitrix to be on her again with a lightning-fast, multi-pronged series of blows. Iris blocked as many as she could, but Savitrix was a whole other level when it came to speed. She felt totally outclassed, but she wasn't going to let Savitrix see that.

Of course, Iris had other tricks up her sleeve. She accelerated the kinetic activity of the atoms around her body, generating an aura of heat. As she ran, she manipulated the friction her body was making to increase the heat of her aura . . . and punched Savitrix with a hot fist. Savitrix merely flipped backward and spun on her hands, launching herself back into the air and twirling into a kick that caught Iris in the jaw. Fortunately for Iris, she healed very quickly in her accelerated state.

"Wait a second," Jai said as he battled Inertia, "I remember you. My dad said something . . ."

"Well, of course he would," Inertia sneered. "He's the reason I'm going to kill you. You and your sis."

Jai dodged another attack from Inertia and whirled to grab Inertia's forearm and twist. Unfortunately for him, Inertia vibrated his arm out of Jai's grip and socked him. "Your father took my life from me. So I'm going to take yours."

Jai got back on his feet and kicked Inertia in the stomach, knocking the dark speedster back. Inertia recovered and struck Jai with a fist heated by the friction he had manipulated via his speed aura. "Hurts, doesn't it? Bet you wish you knew that trick."

"I don't need to know it," Jai retorted. "I'm still going to wipe the floor with your sorry ass. Punk."

Inertia attacked Jai, using his speed to strike from multiple angles simultaneously and hundreds of times in only a second. Jai was still blocking quite well, but Inertia was pouring on the speed, driven by his anger and hatred. Finally, Jai caught Inertia's fist and backhanded him viciously. Inertia rolled to his feet, but Jai's reflexes ensured that Inertia would not yet have the chance to attack . . . or so he thought. Inertia set off another kinetic pulse, blasting Jai back with the sheer force of the burst.

"I knew another boy who called himself Impulse," Inertia remarked. "He met a much undignified end. Went out screaming like a little bitch."

Jai rose to his feet, enraged at what he'd heard. He tore off his clothes, revealing the silver-and-black Impulse costume beneath. He donned the mask, completing the uniform. "Nobody named Impulse goes out screaming like a little bitch. You're gonna regret saying that."

"Really, 'Imp'?" Inertia sneered. "Bring it."

Impulse brought it, all right, in the form of a swift attack on Inertia, who dodged as many of his attacks as he could. Impulse varied his attacks, not sticking to any particular mode of assault for very long, the better to keep Inertia off any solid footing. Unfortunately for Impulse, Inertia was very adaptable and thus was able to counter Impulse's attacks.

"Time to break out the fighting fibers," Iris remarked to herself and quick-changed into her Excel costume, complete with the silver sunglasses. Unfortunately, in the time she had taken to change, Savitrix had kicked her in the back, sending Excel flying. Excel quickly performed a handspring, landing on her feet and spinning into a roundhouse kick. Savitrix caught Excel's calf and spun, throwing Excel a considerable distance away from her. Excel somersaulted backward and landed on her feet, only for Savitrix to emerge from behind and strike her in the back of the neck, knocking her to the ground.

"So slow," Savitrix remarked in a mockingly pitying tone. She pulled her fist back and then brought it down for what she believed would be the finishing blow. To her surprise, Excel rolled over and grabbed her wrist, halting the punch just before it could connect. Excel lifted herself up partly with Savitrix's wrist as leverage and pulled Savitrix down for a hard toss over her shoulder as she got up. Savitrix flipped to her feet and smirked. "Still so much fight in you. I like that."

Excel smirked, despite the fact that one of the lenses of her sunglasses was cracked. "You're about to like it a lot less."

Savitrix chuckled. "We'll see."

Excel linearly accelerated the atomic kinetic energy of the particles between her and Savitrix, generating a trail of heat and flame aimed for Savitrix. Unfortunately, the heat or the flame didn't seem to be affecting Savitrix at all. It was almost as though she was invulnerable, but that . . . that just couldn't be, could it?

"Surprised?" Savitrix asked. "There's a monomolecular field around my body that can absorb and drain the energy from attacks directed at my person."

"Let's see if it can drain this!" Excel challenged, zooming up close to Savitrix for a punch. As she threw the punch, though, she experienced a strange sensation of weakening when she made contact with Savitrix, as though all she'd really done was politely tap the dark speedster. "What the . . . ?"

"I told you," Savitrix replied, just before striking Excel so hard that it propelled her the entire distance to the far end of the university courtyard. Excel collapsed on her back, not in the best of condition but not in the worst, either, due to her speed-induced healing. She didn't have time to rest, though, as Savitrix had just arrived to yank her up by her hair, much to Excel's pain.

_I knew I should have cut my hair,_ Excel thought.

* * *

Back in Atlantis, the medics were watching Cerdian as the teenage boy slumbered. To their surprise, the wound they had seen him with was healing extremely well, too well to be normal, even for him. They had tried to stabilize him in order to expedite the healing process further, but the aura of foul magic surrounding him had prevented them from touching him. Something had happened to put him in the state he'd been in when Garth brought him to them and it was nothing good.

As Cerdian slept, his mind was active. Pain coursed through his body, even as he was healing. His every neuron felt like it was being electrocuted, his bones felt like they were cracking, his muscles burned, and his tongue felt like a choking instrument placed in his mouth. He didn't know it at the time, but his body was mending itself and at the same time . . . becoming something else.

In the realm of sleep where he was found, he was trapped in a crimson-and-violet miasma. He generated his force blade, hoping it would literally shed some light on his situation, but the force blade's light seemed to be swallowed by the miasma. He glared through the miasma, willing his eyes to focus . . . only to wish he hadn't.

There was death . . . and more death . . . and more death. Death to the right of him, death to the left of him, death ahead of him, death behind him, death, death, death everywhere. It was enough to make the teenager vomit and vomit he did. When he regained some of his senses, he could recognize those bodies.

_Mother! Father!_ Cerdian screamed internally, no sound escaping his mouth. He ran down the killing fields, only to see familiar faces at every turn. The most horrifying, though, was Lian. Her costume was ripped in several places and the tears were stained with blood. Her eyes were an open, glassy, unseeing green . . . just staring emptily into nothing.

It was this sight that made Cerdian collapse on his knees. He grabbed Lian and pulled her close, rationally knowing it was impossible yet irrationally hoping that the nearness of him would make her wake up or at least breathe. He found his voice, small and weak, muttering Lian's name repetitively and helplessly. He rocked softly with her in his arms, her name the mantra that his wan lips repeated, tears of blood seeping down his cheeks.

It was the sight of a new bloodstain on Lian's face that made Cerdian stop. He felt his own face and blood stained the tips of his fingers, prompting his eyes to widen in shock. And Lian was still so still . . . so unmoving . . . so beautiful, even in death. It made Cerdian weep, weep for what they could have been together and the life that they had been denied.

"Are you just going to sit on your knees and take that?" a cruel, mocking voice asked, prompting Cerdian to whirl and see a shadowy figure of indefinite gender posed mockingly. "Or are you going to make sure that this doesn't happen for real? Are you going to make sure that no one, _no one,_ has the power to take the people you love away from you?"

Cerdian let out a low, hissing breath, the shadow being dissipating into a mist that mixed with the miasma, a miasma that began swirling around Cerdian. The misty darkness was a cyclone, a tempest that invited Cerdian into its embrace . . . and Cerdian accepted that invitation wholeheartedly.

In the real world, the on-duty medic gasped in horror. The healing of Cerdian's wound had drastically accelerated, the wound closing in the space of seconds. A baleful purple misty energy seeped out of his body, growing into a spiraling storm of malevolent force, prompting the medic to flee from the room to alert the others. The first two to catch the medic's hurried departure were Garth and Dolphin; the former quick enough to grab the medic's arm.

"What's happening?"

"He's . . . he's . . ." The medic was speechless, so deep her terror was.

"What's happening to him?!" Dolphin asked. "What's happening to my son?!"

A deep chill ran down Garth's spine, just before a bloodcurdling howl of demoniac fury could be heard from Cerdian's room. A burst of potent dark magic later, Garth could feel Cerdian's mutated energy signature moving far away and very fast, faster than Garth felt he could keep up with. He had to try, though; he owed it to his son.

* * *

End Notes: That's the next cliffhanger for this occasion. Will Lian be attacked? What is this strange transmutation Cerdian has undergone and what will its consequences be? Where did Christopher Kent's new abilities come from? Will Iris and Jai West survive the wrath of the dark speedsters Savitrix and Inertia? How will Mar'i and Damian fare against Executrix, or Olivia against Oni and Quincy? For the answers to those questions and others, wait for the next chapter and let me know what you thought of this one.


	4. Storm Surge

"Titans: Legacies"

Chapter 4: "Storm Surge"

Disclaimer: The characters seen here, with the exceptions of Executrix, Savitrix, Quincy, and Ultrawoman, belong to DC Comics and Time Warner, not me. I only own this story and the characters I just mentioned.

Author's note: No doubt you saw the end of last chapter. If so, you're wondering what Lyta did to Cerdian. You're gonna get your answer to that question here, and you will see the conclusion to the fights started in chapter 2. For the record, chapters 2 and 3 happen near-simultaneously; they're just focused on different people. Anyway, let's go.

* * *

Damian had just had another slash with his kris effortlessly parried by Executrix, who thrust her sword at him with such speed that it was all he could do to duck under it in time to save his own life. As it was, the blade cut his tie off, cut through his dress shirt, undershirt, and more vulnerable flesh. Mar'i fired a starbolt through her index and middle fingers to better focus the energy beam, only for Executrix to block that with the flat of her sword. The starbolt ricocheted off and vaporized a portion of sidewalk.

Executrix flipped away from the bleeding Damian and twisted in midair into a kick that caught Mar'i by surprise as to its strength. She could feel the force in the kick, not quite enough to hurt her, but she could feel it. Having blocked it with one forearm, she moved to grab Executrix's ankle with her free hand, but Executrix flipped over her head and dropped into a low sweeping kick meant to trip her. Mar'i flew into the air and came down with a punch that could have shattered steel if she'd put all her might into it. Unfortunately, Executrix grabbed Mar'i's wrist and tossed her even as she kicked an attacking Damian.

"Who are you?" Damian asked.

"You don't need to know," Executrix replied. "Nobody needs to know."

Mar'i got up, only to see just how badly injured Damian was. The bloodstain from where he'd been slashed was only growing, and if this fight didn't end soon, then Damian would pass out from blood loss or worse. To that end, she fired another concentrated starbolt at Executrix, who merely blocked it again with her sword. Of course, the starbolt was a feint, meant to distract Executrix while Mar'i grabbed Damian and sped him the hell away from Executrix.

"What are you doing?!" Damian asked indignantly.

"Saving your life, or don't you notice how much you're bleeding?" Mar'i retorted.

Mar'i was going at a speed of roughly 75 mph, said speed the byproduct of her superhuman musculature. Certainly that would be fast enough to outrun Executrix, or so she hoped. As she would see very soon, she hoped in vain. Feeling the wind moving in a way that had nothing to do with her own movements, she turned her head . . . and found Executrix running beside her.

Mar'i raised her arm to block Executrix's sword, only for the blade to cut through her uniform sweater, dress shirt, and super-durable bronze-golden flesh. Mar'i pulled her arm back, shocked at what had just happened. _That sword . . . what the hell is it made of?_

"Protecting Robin, aren't you?" Executrix deduced.

"I don't need anyone's protection!" Damian spat, even as he labored to break out of Mar'i's grip so he could get another shot at Executrix.

Executrix stopped in front of Mar'i and Damian and slashed at them. Mar'i ducked and moved to trip Executrix with a kick, only for Executrix to jump over her leg and attempt to kick her. Mar'i evaded just in time and Damian slashed at Executrix with his kris. Executrix blocked said slash and kicked him right where she'd wounded him. If Damian was in any kind of pain from that, he didn't let it show.

"She's not going to let us get away," Damian snarled. "Unhand me and we can take her down together."

Mar'i sighed. As much as she wanted to protect Damian, the problem was that Executrix wasn't going to let them leave without a fight. Thus, she let go of Damian, who rolled onto his feet with his kris in hand. Damian let Executrix make the first move, her slashing at him with her katana. Damian ducked under that slash, only to lose some strands of black hair from her attack, and slashed at her with his kris. She stopped his blade just half an inch from her stomach and broke his wrist before kicking him aside.

Enraged, Mar'i lunged at Executrix, throwing a fast punch at Executrix's masked face. Executrix tilted her head to the side, evading Mar'i's punch, and trapped Mar'i's outstretched arm with her own, using it as leverage to twist her arm behind her back. Mar'i quickly elbowed her with her free arm, knocking Executrix off her. Unfortunately, Executrix quickly sprang to her feet and resumed the attack, only for Damian to emerge between her and Mar'i, sliding low for a kick meant to trip her. It seemingly worked, only for Executrix to catch herself on one hand and kick Damian in the jaw, knocking him to the ground.

Executrix twisted back onto her feet, her sword pointed at Mar'i. "What do you want with us?" Mar'i asked.

"It is not what I want, but what Deathstroke wants," Executrix answered in her emotionless monotone. "And Deathstroke wants you gone."

Mar'i's reaction to that could be summed up in two words. "Oh. Crap."

Mar'i knew who Deathstroke was. Originally Slade Wilson, the man had been a Special Forces soldier for the United States Army in his youth and had volunteered to test an experimental serum that was supposed to make humans more resistant to truth serums if captured by enemy forces. The actual effect was nothing like Slade had been told; his brain functions' efficiency had been enhanced by a factor of nine, resulting in superhuman physical and mental prowess. Combined with his combat skills – close-quarters fighting and strategic and tactical acumen – he had become one of the greatest threats possible to the hero community in his later role as the mercenary Deathstroke.

In his earlier days as Deathstroke, Slade had been sometimes an adversary and sometimes an ally to several incarnations of Titans, whom he had the most dealings with before making himself an enemy of the entire superhero community. His closest alliance in the Titans, though, had been with Dick Grayson, known at the time as Nightwing. There had been rumors and speculation as to exactly how close that alliance was, but the final nail in the coffin of that relationship had been the destruction of Nightwing's protectorate Bludhaven, as ordered by Deathstroke.

Personally, Mar'i couldn't imagine what her father had ever seen in Deathstroke. The man murdered people for a living and he could justify it however he liked, but murder was murder, even if the people killed supposedly "had it coming." Maybe there had been some hope for him once upon a time, but that time was long since past in Mar'i's mind. Of course, the fact that said mercenary had sent people to kill her and Damian might have had something to do with her opinion, but it still stood.

"Deathstroke," Damian snarled, rising to his feet. "He sent her and Clayface, but . . . what about the others?"

"Others?" Mar'i echoed. "You mean he's got people after our friends, too?"

"Likely enough," Damian answered. "A master strategist like Deathstroke, if going by reputation, would want to make sure anyone we could call for help would be too occupied to come help us . . . or worse."

Mar'i shuddered internally. "Then we have to end this now and find the others."

"Easier said than done." Damian's tone was grim as he said that, just a split second before Executrix lunged for Damian with her sword. Fortunately, Mar'i was faster and she grabbed the blade of the sword, using it as leverage to position herself into a kick to Executrix's sternum. Executrix fell back but quickly recovered, contorting onto her feet and slashing at Mar'i, who moved behind Executrix and trapped her in a full nelson.

That turned out to be a bad idea, as Executrix simply used her katana to run herself through too quickly for Mar'i to evade, the rest of the blade impaling Mar'i as well. Executrix ripped out the katana even more quickly than she'd thrust it in, collapsing on her front as Mar'i fell backward.

"_Mar'i!!_" Damian screamed, running to her. Forgetting his own injuries, he picked her up and quickly utilized the override codes for the JL transporter to get them to the Justice Society's medical lab.

"_Transporting in 5 . . . 4 . . ._" Damian cursed the timer, wishing it would hurry up. "_3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . Transporting now._"

* * *

Damian found himself inside the Justice Society's medical lab, with Dr. Mid-Nite looking at him in surprise. Damian glared at him. "Help her," he snarled.

Dr. Mid-Nite gently took Mar'i from Damian and laid her on a medical cot, right next to Chris. Damian shuddered when he saw Chris. "Who did this to him?" he asked.

"Someone every bit as strong as him and more ruthless, cold-blooded, and vicious than he ever could be," Dr. Mid-Nite replied. "He's healing well, and so should Mar'i, provided you let me do my job."

"Do it, then," Damian spat, starting to walk out when Dr. Mid-Nite called him back.

"You think I can let you leave when you're not in too good a shape yourself?"

Damian grumbled. "I don't matter. Mar'i does. Help her. I'll be fine."

"No, Damian, you're staying here where I can take care of your injuries, too, or don't you notice how much you're bleeding?" Dr. Mid-Nite retorted.

Damian suddenly felt woozy, the exertion of the battle with Executrix and getting Mar'i to some degree of safety caught up with him. It took all his strength to get on the nearest available medical cot before he simply collapsed. His last thoughts before losing consciousness were of the two most precious people in his life . . . and if he believed in any deity, he would have prayed to that deity to shepherd those two back to the realm of the living.

* * *

On the geographically opposing coast, Olivia fought Oni and Quincy one-handedly. The damage to the nerves connecting her other arm to her shoulder was still too great for her to do much movement with that arm. She had regained mobility in her fingers, but that was about it. That didn't stop her; she had a sister to protect and protect her she would.

At the moment, Oni and Quincy were firing arrows at her, while Olivia dodged, blocked, and caught those arrows with her remaining usable hand. "Pretty good for a girl with only one working arm, don't you think?" Quincy remarked.

"Shut up," Oni grunted.

"What do you want with Lian?" Olivia asked.

"Sister dear, we just want her dead," Oni replied.

"Not a snowball's chance in hell!" Olivia declared, speeding toward Oni and Quincy. Both fired rapidly at the charging Olivia, but Olivia effortlessly zigzagged out of the way of the arrows, catching Oni by the throat and ramming him into the wall of the school building. Quincy shot an arrow at Olivia's unprotected back, aiming to remove the arm whose hand was gripping Oni's throat and thus render Olivia effectively helpless. Unfortunately for him, Olivia caught the arrow . . . with her formerly unusable hand and threw the arrow back at Quincy, who took cover a nanosecond before the arrowhead exploded.

"Sister," Oni hissed. "I'll be seeing you again . . . soon."

At that moment, Oni pulled out an arrow from his quiver and triggered the arrowhead. Olivia threw him aside and dived for cover, curling in on herself to minimize the percentage of her body left exposed to the subsequent explosion. When that explosion finished, Olivia looked up, only to find Oni and Quincy gone.

Olivia groaned and rolled over, willing Excalibur's protective mesh to withdraw into her body, leaving her very scantly clad due to the mesh tearing through her clothes when it emerged. She supposed there would be people coming to check out the explosion, which was exactly why she couldn't be here. Questions would be asked, questions she could not answer if she wanted to maintain whatever was left of her secret identity. Thus, she got up and sped away from the school; she'd make up whatever excuses she had to the next day. The important thing was finding Lian before those archers did; she'd worry about Oni's connection to her father later.

* * *

In Keystone City, Wally West was busy repairing a car for the KCPD when he heard an unnatural whistling of the wind. Only someone moving at super-speed could produce that whistling and Wally wondered who it was. Maybe it was Iris paying a visit. Wally quickly slid out from under the car he was repairing and got off the mechanic's slide. When he stood, he received a shock like nothing he'd experienced before.

It was Iris and Jai, in costume with their bodies arranged to form a crude representation of the Flash lightning symbol. Beneath them was a message painted in what looked like blood, and Iris and Jai's battered bodies and torn costumes didn't do much to refute that assumption. The message was simply, "F#$& YOU, WEST."

Wally quickly changed into the Flash and input the codes to the Justice League transporter system, taking himself and the twins from the police garage to S.T.A.R. Labs' medical wing. Once fully materialized, S.T.A.R. Labs doctors flocked to the Flash and the twins. Some of the doctors began to move the Flash away from the twins, while the other doctors picked up Iris and Jai and began to move them to a room where they could be treated. The Flash would have protested the separation, but rationally he knew – he _knew_ – that the doctors needed space in order to work.

_But I can do something,_ he thought. _I can find whoever did this to my kids and make them pay._ He sped away, intent on doing exactly that. It wasn't like he could do anything else, at this point.

* * *

Lian was playing hooky from school. Not the sort of thing a heroine was supposed to do, but she couldn't deal with being cooped up all day. She'd taken it well enough until sixth period, and that had been the limit of her willingness to play caged bird. Oh, yes, this bird was going to soar, and she'd just snatch notes from any of her classmates who could be bothered to give them to her.

As it was, she was just planning to get into some harmless mischief. She'd have gone to the Star City Youth Center to practice her archery, but everybody knew her face there, so an early arrival would tip off her dad or effective grandparents to the fact that she was playing hooky. Thus, she was left with little choice than to simply visit the beach. Fortunately, she had her bikini on underneath her clothes, so no one could exactly say that she wasn't prepared.

Just as she was about to leave, an ethereal voice taunted her. "Playing hooky, Miss Harper? Such a naughty girl you are. And naughty girls . . . need to be disciplined."

"Whoever you are, this isn't funny!" Lian declared.

"Oh, but I find you quite amusing, Miss Harper," the voice taunted. "Truly, the mortal incarnation of the maiden hunter goddess Artemis, except not. You'd have to actually be a maiden for the analogy to work."

"My sex life is none of your damn beeswax," Lian retorted sharply. "Who are you?"

"You want to know?" the voice continued to taunt. "I'll show you."

Suddenly, Lian found herself knocked out of the school complex by an invisible force, which wrapped itself around her body like a cocoon and threw her down the length of the street. The force unwrapped itself from around Lian and took on a more corporeal shape, a tall Grecian teenage girl with long purple hair and dressed in a purple-and-silver outfit resembling a "Dark Wonder Girl" or "Dark Wonder Woman with pants."

"Who are you?" Lian asked.

"My name's Lyta," the girl replied, her lavender eyes glimmering with iniquity. "And you're going to be dead soon."

"What makes you say that?" Lian interrogated sardonically.

"This," Lyta answered, generating a telekinetic pulse that knocked Lian down to the ground.

Lian just got up with a contemptuous sneer. "Is that all you have? A little psychokinetic smoke and mirrors?"

"You humans. Always putting up brave faces." Lyta smirked. "Let's see how long you can keep it up."

Lyta began to chant, but in the time it took for her to chant, Lian had removed one of her earrings and thrown it at Lyta's throat. Of course, Lyta had apparently thought of that, as the earring stopped just an inch from her throat in midair. When the chant finished, a multitude of monstrous, hulking creatures formed out of the asphalt of the streets and the dirt and rocks beneath.

"Whoa, nice trick," Lian complimented sarcastically. "Did they teach you that one, or did you come up with it all by yourself?"

"They're going to pummel you, bitch," Lyta replied. "Then they're going to gut you. Then I'm going to strike the _coup de grace._"

"Sounds like a plan," a baleful voice spoke. "Except for the part where _I_ do those things to _you._"

Lyta and Lian looked in the direction from which the voice came . . . and found Cerdian staring ominously at Lyta. Scraps of his costume had been torn away, exposing flesh branded with twisted, web-like black patterns. His face was almost completely covered in those same patterns, only more intricate and more detailed. The whites of his eyes were completely red, as though all the blood vessels in his eyes had shattered.

"Cerdian?" Lian asked, horrified. "What happened to you?"

"She did," Cerdian growled, pointing an accusing finger at Lyta. "And now she has to die."

"Me? Die?" Lyta asked. "You insane little fool."

Suddenly, three of the earth creatures fell apart, as though sliced by some invisible blade . . . or wire. "What was that?!" Lyta shouted indignantly.

"Me," Cerdian replied balefully, invisible wires trailing from his wrists.

"What did you do to him?!" Lian asked furiously.

"It was supposed to keep him out of the game," Lyta answered. "It seems, though, that it's just corroded his mind. No matter, I'll just put him out of his misery."

Cerdian suddenly disappeared and seconds later, the earth creatures completely fell apart. Lyta looked at their remains with astonishment. "That is some speed, Cerdian. I'm impressed."

"Really?" Cerdian replied in mock astonishment. "You mean you're not ready to pray to whatever impotent deities you worship? You mean you're not ready to hunker down in a corner and beg for mercy? You mean you don't wish to do the sane, rational thing and kill yourself before I get the chance? Whatever shall I _do?!_" His tone grew increasingly mocking and sadistic as he spoke, matched only by his action of swiftly extending his vector wires to her, holding her arms and legs and lifting her into a spread-eagle position. "I wonder how much force it would take for me to rip those arms and legs off."

Suddenly, a belt buckle struck Cerdian's cheek, prompting a surprised outcry from him. He whirled to find Lian with her arm outstretched as though she had just thrown something. Her other hand was holding a belt that was now minus a buckle, with much of the strap wrapped around her arm.

"Don't make me come over there," she stated, with dead seriousness in her tone.

"She dies," Cerdian snarled. "She came to kill you. I'm going to kill her."

"It's not like I'm a porcelain doll that needs to be protected from the world," Lian answered. "I can take care of myself, and you're no killer."

"Lian . . ." Cerdian growled, his voice sounding pained. The vector wires withdrew into his body, releasing Lyta, and Cerdian dropped, the dark magic in his body beginning to subside. Lian moved slowly toward Cerdian, keeping one eye on him and the other on Lyta, who was charging a bolt of mystic lightning again. Lian simply unfurled the strap that used to be her belt and lashed at Lyta with it.

"Stay away from my boy," she hissed at the teenage warrior-sorceress.

Lian reached Cerdian and helped him up to his feet. She could see that the twisted spidery patterns on his flesh were mostly gone, save for a small mark on the inside of his forearm. "You all right?"

"I'll be ok," Cerdian replied, his eyes having healed from their bloodshot state. He subsequently belied his brave statement by vomiting blood onto the ground.

"I'm not done yet," Lyta snarled, firing a bolt of mystic lightning at Lian and Cerdian, the latter of which generated telekinetic vectors to block the bolt.

Cerdian chuckled. "I can still fight, you know."

"But for how long?" Her tone was mockingly solicitous.

"Don't worry about that. Worry about yourself." He smiled confidently.

Lyta launched herself into a physical attack on Lian and Cerdian, both of whom dodged. Cerdian stumbled a little on his dodge, but quickly recovered and fired a blast of mystical force from his eyes. Lyta dodged, only for Lian to lash at the teenage warrior-sorceress with her belt strap. Lyta dodged and swerved to kick Lian, only for Cerdian to speed in front of Lian to take the attack in her place. The force of the kick knocked Cerdian off his feet and to the ground, his ribcage slightly cracked.

"Weaker than I expected," Lyta sneered. "But then, I don't suppose you can really survive having my magic inside you."

"What . . . do you mean?" Cerdian asked.

"You're going to die," Lyta answered. "My magic is tearing you apart from the inside. I can see it."

"Then I'm gonna make these last moments memorable." Cerdian chuckled and forced himself back onto his feet. He extended a vector from his arm and pointed it at Lyta, only for a belt buckle to strike her in the eye. Cerdian turned and saw Lian with her arm in the throwing position, winking at him.

"You . . ." Lyta growled, holding a hand over her injured eye. "No matter. Your lover's going to die, anyway, and then . . . you'll join him." Lyta teleported away, leaving Cerdian to retract his vector.

"We'd better get you to Dr. Mid-Nite," Lian said.

"Sure," Cerdian agreed, opening a trans-dimensional portal and stepping inside with Lian.

* * *

When the couple emerged on the other side of the portal, they were inside the Justice Society's headquarters. "You, too?" Jay Garrick, the original Flash, asked.

"Yeah," Lian replied. "Wait, what do you mean, 'you, too'?"

"I'll show you," Jay replied, guiding Lian and Cerdian to the medical lab. Inside, they saw Mar'i, Damian, Chris, Iris, and Jai in varying states of physical disrepair.

"What happened to them?" Cerdian asked.

"They were attacked," Jay replied.

"Who? Who did this to them?" Cerdian inquired frantically.

"Iris and Jai were attacked by someone Wally believes is Inertia," Jay explained. "Chris was attacked by some kind of 'Ultrawoman,' and we don't know exactly who came after Mar'i and Damian; Damian passed out before we could glean the identity of their attacker from him."

"Inertia? Ultrawoman?" Lian repeated.

"Yeah," Wildcat, Ted Grant, answered, having entered earlier.

Cerdian began to collapse, only to be quickly caught by Jay. "What happened to you?" Jay asked.

"Lyta," Cerdian replied. "She branded me with her magic."

"Then we need you to stay here for a while, too," Ted concluded. "Don't worry; we'll get Fate and Zatanna on it."

* * *

In Star City, Olivia had made it back to the manor in which she lived along with her parents and was now waiting for those parents to return so she could get some answers from them concerning Oni. While she waited, she sensed someone else in the manor. She stood and her vision snapped into infrared, looking for heat signatures other than her own. She saw someone moving, highlighted by their body heat, and began to follow that heat signature. As she followed it, she willed Excalibur to coat her forearm and hand, a blade extending from that arm.

"I'm not here to hurt you," a young woman's voice spoke.

Olivia shifted her vision back to normal, seeing a young Vietnamese woman with skintight black fabric covering her entire body except for her head. There was no decoration on her attire save for silver stitching along the arms and down the sides. A black mask covered her face from the bridge of her nose to her jaw and her hair was tied back in a long braid held by a thin tube.

"Who are you?" Olivia asked.

"Sin," the young woman replied. "And you and I need to talk."

* * *

End Notes: Might as well end this here. Anyway, this storyline will continue, but not right now. No, for the next few chapters, you will get "Secret Origins" stories about how the Titans here came to be, about the experiences and events that shaped them into the people you saw in the first chapter. However, when this storyline does resume, there will be some changes on the horizon for some of the characters. In the meantime, I'd like to hear what you thought of this piece, both good and bad.


	5. Secret Origins: Damian Wayne

"Titans: Legacies"

Secret Origins 1: "Son of the Bat,  
Scion of the Demon"

"The Secret Origin of Damian Wayne"

Disclaimer: The characters depicted here largely belong to DC Comics, not me. My only profit comes from knowing that you've read this story.

Author's note: There seems to be a great difference between the relatively subdued Damian Wayne of Titans: Legacies and the violence-prone, disrespectful, petulant child we see in present Batman and Batman-related comics. The goal of this Secret Origins tale is to show you how that child evolved into the teenager seen in the first chapter of Titans: Legacies. Hopefully, I do a good job.

* * *

"_He's staying with us._"

Two years ago, Bruce Wayne took Damian Wayne, his son by a brief, ill-fated liaison with Talia, the "Daughter of the Demon," into his home on an indefinite basis. The boy was not safe under Talia's care, not with Ra's al Ghul wanting to use Damian as his host body. Ra's had found a way to prolong his life, but it was relatively unsatisfactory for the long-lived madman; he wanted a body he could grow into, one at the peak of its health and vitality.

Bruce was not letting that happen. He was not letting Ra's use Damian to prolong his life and he was not letting Talia poison his mind any more than she already had. There was never a time that he questioned his decision to bring Damian into his home, but there were times when he wondered if he'd bitten off more than he could chew.

Such as this particular moment.

"Mr. Wayne, Damian is not adjusting well here," the headmistress stated bluntly. She glared sharply at Bruce. "And no, another donation is not going to grant him an extension. Either you rein him in, or you will have to find another school to take him."

"Ms. Macpherson, Damian has shown improvement," Bruce insisted. "The amount of incidents you've had to call me in for isn't as high as it was in the beginning of the year. And his grades have been exemplary, as you yourself admitted."

"Yes, he is a gifted student, but he is also a recurrent safety risk in and of himself," Macpherson answered.

"How so?" Bruce asked.

"He's still getting into fights," Macpherson replied.

"Are the kids he's fighting all right?"

"They will be, given some stitches and braces and wiring." Macpherson's tone was wry, but her face was as hard as iron. "But he is dangerous. If you cannot rein him in, I will expel him."

"I understand." Bruce nodded. "Good day, Ms. Macpherson."

"You as well, Mr. Wayne."

Later that day, when school let out, a limo came to pick up Damian, who opened the back door roughly and threw his backpack in the backseat before plopping himself roughly inside. "Hard day, Master Damian?" Alfred asked from the driver's seat.

"Just get me home," Damian spat.

"As you wish, Master Damian," Alfred answered kindly.

* * *

Once home, Damian stomped into Wayne Manor and stormed up to his room. Inside, he threw his backpack aside and plopped onto the bed. He picked up a kunai from under his bed and threw it at the dartboard on the wall across from him, the kunai striking the circle immediately preceding the bull's-eye.

He knew Batman had been at his school, masquerading as that fop Bruce Wayne. He didn't see why his father kept up that silly charade; the man that had sired him was no man, but rather a tempest of righteous wrath upon evildoers in human form. The fact that he pretended to be no more than a feeble-minded, effete socialite was offensive to Damian.

Soon enough, Damian heard a knock on the door. He knew that knock very well; it was his babysitter. He didn't bother answering; he just threw another kunai at the dartboard, hard enough to make a sound upon impact. That was the signal for her to come in.

A petite girl with long dark hair tied back in a ponytail and green-brown eyes opened the door. She wore in a loose gray blouse and black drawstring pants, along with white athletic shoes for her feet. "Hello."

"Hi," Damian spat, though there wasn't as much force in his vitriol as there had been when he spoke to Alfred.

"Training." The girl ordered.

Damian grumbled, getting off the bed and starting to discard his uniform, a gray blazer over a white dress shirt and black pants with gray tie. Once out of the uniform, he crossed the distance to his dresser and found a pair of black sweatpants and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. He quickly put them on before following his babysitter out of his room and into the Batcave beneath the Manor.

Inside the Batcave, the babysitter guided him to the training area. "Why don't I get a weapon?" Damian asked petulantly.

"Not until you learn self-control," the babysitter replied. "We agreed."

Damian growled. "Let's just get this over with."

"Come," the babysitter challenged, shifting into a fighting stance.

Damian lunged at the babysitter, only for her to easily deflect his punch with one hand and throw him overhead with the other hand. Damian flipped to land on his feet and whirled into a kick, which the babysitter easily deflected with a backhanded brush of her hand. The brush knocked him off-balance, but he recovered by landing on his hand and spun on that hand into another attack, which the babysitter also deflected.

"Stay clear," she instructed.

_Stay clear?_ Damian echoed internally. It was the same instruction she always gave him whenever they sparred, meaning that he had to keep his thoughts focused when he was in a fight. He couldn't let anger or frustration rule him and he couldn't get impatient; he needed to think beyond those emotions and focus on _how_ to win, not merely on winning itself.

When Bruce Wayne finally came back, he found the babysitter and Damian continuing to spar, with Damian having been no more successful in striking her than he had been at the beginning. "Cassandra," he called out. "How has he been?"

"Getting better," Cassandra Cain answered, even as she deflected another attack from Damian. "That will be enough for today, Damian."

Damian snarled. "I'm not finished yet!"

A subsequent neutralization of his attempt to attack proved him false. "You are."

Bruce looked sternly at Damian from the steps of leading into the Batcave. With a single tilt of his head, Damian knew his father was displeased. Even worse, tonight was the night of the monthly family dinner. That meant dining with the bastards he had reluctantly begun to call "brothers" and that . . . _woman._ He could not even think her name; the very _idea_ of her felt like an insult to him.

* * *

The family dinner was a splendid gathering. Alfred had gone all out, cooking the best food for that occasion. Bruce sat at the head of the table, with Dick Grayson and Selina Kyle sitting closest to him on either side. Mar'i Grayson, Dick's eight-year-old daughter, sat next to Dick and toddler Helena Kyle sat next to Selina, while Damian sat next to Mar'i and Cassandra sat across from him, with Tim Drake sitting next to her. There was chatter on the parts of nearly everyone, save for Damian, who contributed nothing at all, and Cassandra, who contributed very little.

"How are you doing, Damian?" Dick asked.

"Fine," Damian grunted in response, taking small bites of his food. It was good, he had to admit to himself, but that didn't mean he liked sitting here and bearing all this chatter.

"I've been hearing you're still getting into fights," Bruce commented.

"I win," Damian answered bluntly. "I always win."

"But do you start the fights?"

"They had it coming. They should have left me alone."

"Damian. We are supposed to use the skills we've learned to protect people, not to engage in random and gratuitous acts of violence."

"And maybe if you'd let me join you on the streets, I wouldn't have to 'engage in random and gratuitous acts of violence.'"

"We've discussed this before. You're not ready."

"I'm more than ready!" Damian was on the verge of exploding. "I have ten times the skill any of your other 'sons' had when they were my age!"

"Skill is nothing. The will is everything and you don't have the will."

"I _have_ the will! I believe in the mission!"

"Do you? Or do you simply want a legitimization for your impulses?"

"F$# this!" Damian yelled. "I don't have to prove myself to you!" Damian rose from the table and ran for his room.

"I'll talk to him," Cassandra offered.

_

* * *

_

Three years later

* * *

Damian packed his bags. There was no reason to stay anymore. Not with his father dead. After all these years, after all those narrow escapes . . . that monster had to be the one who killed him. And his father, his foolishly noble father, had actually tried to save him, after all the lives that monster had taken, all the graveyards the laughing beast had filled.

The monster didn't deserve to live. And he was the only one who saw that. His father would not be avenged so long as the false sons were the ones who held the keys to his legacy. The monster would continue to live, continue to kill, continue to fill more graveyards. That was an affront to the very code Damian had been raised with, which was that threats should be answered with the force necessary to completely neutralize them. If Dick, Tim, Cassandra, and _that woman_ wouldn't do it, then he would.

Thus it was that Damian found himself fleeing from Wayne Manor, never to return if he had his way. He knew Dick and Tim would be happy to be rid of him, to be rid of the living challenge to their claim on Batman's legacy. It didn't matter anymore; nothing did, nothing except seeing that monster dead.

Damian sneaked through the back alleys and side streets of Gotham City. He didn't know where he was going, honestly, but he knew he was getting deeper into the city, farther away from Wayne Manor. As he moved through the intricate web of forlorn city streets, he saw something that made him pause.

It was a man in a black leather jacket, gloves, and boots with gray body armor covering his body and a red helmet concealing his face. He was fighting several goons and handling them with mocking ease . . . just before he slashed them with a curved, asymmetrical blade. Once he was done with them, the masked man left the goons in small puddles of their own blood.

"You might as well show yourself," he said. "I know you're there."

"Red Hood," Damian greeted tersely. "Or do I call you Jason Todd?"

"If it isn't the bastard," Red Hood retorted snidely.

Damian snarled and lunged to attack Red Hood for the perceived insult. Red Hood simply slammed the heel of his palm into Damian's chest, stopping Damian's charge and dropping the young boy on his rear.

"That's a big bag," Red Hood remarked. "Running away from home?"

"It's not my home," Damian spat. "It never was."

"I get what you mean, believe me, I do. I know what it's like to be a placeholder for someone else . . . but you weren't even that, were you?"

"It doesn't matter. I'm worthier of carrying on the mission than any of you ever were."

"Watch your mouth, kid. You may be a better fighter than any of us were at your age, but you might want to think twice before shooting your mouth off like that."

"F$# you."

"You've got attitude. That's great."

"I'm going to kill him."

"The Joker? Good luck with that. Golden Boy and his little brother won't let you."

"Doesn't matter," Damian spat. "He's going to die, no matter what they have to say."

"Then you might as well come with me," Red Hood suggested. "Like minds need to stick together."

"We're not alike," Damian snarled.

"We're more alike than you think and you can't stay on the streets," Red Hood answered. "Even you need sleep and bad things tend to happen to people who sleep unguarded, especially thirteen-year-old boys all alone on the streets."

Damian snarled. "Don't try to intimidate me."

"Just warning you." Red Hood's tone was more an amused smile.

Thus it was that Damian Wayne moved in with Jason Todd. While the accommodations were not what Damian was used to, he would learn to adapt. Besides, as much as he hated to admit it, Jason was probably the only person who even began to understand him. Hell if he was going to admit it out loud, though; he had his pride, after all.

_

* * *

_

Six months later

* * *

"I brought us a playmate," Jason announced with sardonic joviality.

Damian, having just turned fourteen, barely looked in the direction of Jason's voice. Then he did a double take and found Mar'i Grayson, somewhere between eleven and twelve years old, standing next to Jason. Jason was garbed in his usual attire of a leather jacket over a tank top and worn and torn jeans, while Mar'i was wearing a black sweater and a navy jean skirt over black leggings. There was an almost hollow look in her eyes, a deepening of the chasm he had vaguely seen in her when he'd first met her.

"Mar'i . . . what are you doing here?" he asked.

"Running away," Mar'i replied. "Like you did."

"Turns out she's more like us than I thought at first," Jason remarked. "She doesn't fit in, either. She's not wanted, either."

Damian could see Mar'i flinch at those words and he felt something inside him that compelled him to reach out to her. He brutally quashed it; he did not do such things. He did not get emotionally involved with anyone, not even if they were Mar'i Grayson.

"Where's she going to sleep?" he grunted.

"With you," Jason replied.

Damian glared. "With _me?_"

"Yeah, I've been taking the couch so you can have the bed and the couch is cramped enough as it is," Jason retorted. "Either she takes the bed and you take the floor or vice versa or you sleep in the same f#$& bed."

"Fine," Damian grunted. "She can have the bed."

That night, Damian slept on the floor of the singular bedroom in the rundown apartment. He curled in on himself, resisting every urge to look up and see how Mar'i was sleeping. He didn't care, he told himself, he didn't care at all. He didn't need to care about her and she didn't need to care about him.

Finally, Damian managed to drift into the oblivion of sleep, only to relive the night of his fourteenth birthday. In his mind's eye, he was inside one of the satellite Batcaves that Jason had managed to find. He saw the Joker bound by cable wire, the mad smile still on his face. He saw Red Hood toss him his kris.

"_Go ahead,_" Red Hood encouraged.

Damian watched through his own eyes as he stalked toward the Joker, kris in hand. "_Ah, poor little Bat-brat,_" the Joker taunted."_Killing me to get Daddy's love._"

Damian gritted his teeth in rage and brought down the kris . . . slicing through the cable wire binding the Joker and cutting him in the process. "_What are you doing?!_" Red Hood asked.

"_He's not going to die this way,_" Damian heard his own voice answer. "_He's going to die on his feet, fighting for his miserable, misbegotten life._"

He heard Red Hood chuckle sardonically, but paid him no mind. "_Come on, Joker._"

The fight was long and brutal, with the Joker having more tricks up his sleeve than Damian had expected. The flower that squirted acid had resulted in him losing his shirt and getting a burn mark on his left pectoral. The candy bombs had burned him in other places, but all of those were just delaying tactics. The Joker was doomed from the very beginning and Damian made sure he knew that when he electrocuted the bastard with his own "joy buzzer."

The dream of the Joker's death faded out into the remembrance of overhearing Alfred reading Bruce Wayne's will. Damian had not stuck around to hear the entire thing, but he had been around long enough to hear that control of Wayne Enterprises and access to the Wayne billions was to be divided evenly between Dick and Tim. He had waited and waited and waited, but he had finally left when it turned out he would never be mentioned in the will. That had proven it for him, that he had meant nothing to his father, that the 'sons' Bruce had chosen mattered more than he ever would.

When he awoke, he found himself on the bed and with lithe, strong arms holding him. He turned his head and found Mar'i holding him tightly, having somehow tugged him onto the bed with her. He wasn't surprised that she had accomplished that feat – the alien part of her heritage granted her superhuman strength – but he was confused as to why she would want to do such a thing for him.

_

* * *

_

Two months later

* * *

"Birthday present," Damian stated in his most deadpan tones.

He watched as Mar'i gaped at the object in her hands. It was sleek black fabric in a humanoid shape and a translucent purple symbol resembling outstretched wings, only simultaneously sharper and more ornate. A mask grew from the collar of the costume, enough to cover her face all the way to her hairline.

"The suit has miniature solar emitters woven into the fabric, to keep you charged up even if you're cut off from sunlight," Damian explained. "The fabric is a special protective weave, derived from Tamaranean armor. Speaking of Tamaranean armor . . ." Damian handed her a pair of translucent purple bracers.

"Where did you get this?" Mar'i asked.

"I made it," Damian replied simply. "I've been working on it since you came."

Mar'i hugged Damian tightly, but she had enough control over her strength not to crack or break his bones, although he would be nursing bruises later. He didn't mind, though; anyone who would be stopped by pain was weak. "There's just one thing I don't like," she said.

"What is it?" he asked, keeping any traces of solicitousness out of his voice.

"The mask," Mar'i answered. "I don't like masks."

"They're necessary for what we do, and what we do we do in the dark." He held her gently. "I understand."

"You do?"

"You weren't meant for the dark."

Mar'i squeezed Damian tenderly and pulled out of the embrace, going to change into her new costume. A brief hint of a smile formed on Damian's face before he began to change into his costume. He first donned the skintight body-sheath that comprised the main part of his costume, a white torso and sleeves with black legs and pelvis, the white and black separated by an "M"-like divider that made the white on his torso look vaguely like a bird in flight. Next, he donned white combat boots and black gloves with brass knuckles attached. He strapped his sheathed sword, a jian-style blade, to his hip, wrapped a black utility strap around his torso, and threw on his standard khaki cloak. Finally, he donned his standard triangular domino mask, the point facing toward his forehead.

Mar'i came out in her costume . . . and Damian had to do a double take to properly gauge her. The costume fit snugly against her developing frame, the wing symbol shining resplendently on her chest. The bracers held fast on her forearms and Damian's only regret was that the mask hid her eyes. Other than that, she looked absolutely perfect.

"How do I look?" Mar'i asked, her voice subdued by the fabric of the mask.

"Perfect," Damian replied, his own voice darkening. This was customary for him when slipping into costume, as the costume freed him from the restraints imposed upon him in "civilian" garb, allowing him to unleash _the demon._ However, _the demon_ seemed to be coming out more forcefully than usual, as though aroused by the sight of Mar'i in that costume.

"Don't you two look cozy?" Jason remarked, wearing the entirety of his costume save for the helmet, revealing the red domino mask he wore beneath.

Damian resisted the urge to growl at Jason. "We're fine."

"I'm sure you are, kiddo," Jason replied, donning his helmet. "Let's go. It's time 'Batman' got a good look at what he was stupid enough to cast off."

Thus it was that Dick Grayson, who had assumed the mantle of Batman following the Joker's death, got the surprise of his life. The eldest son of Bruce Wayne, in heart and in legality if not in blood, was in the middle of a fight with the Jokerz, a juvenile gang that modeled itself after the deceased "Clown Prince of Crime." The Jokerz dressed in twisted variants of clown and jester costumes and used weapons that were deadlier versions of the gag objects used in clown acts.

At first, Dick had thought they were just a bunch of disorganized little punks attracted to the Joker's "intimidation factor," but he had soon realized that they were _serious._ Times like this simply reaffirmed that conviction, since as of this moment, twin Jokerz with their faces made up like clownish dolls and straw wigs for hair were attacking him with ribbons. These were not ordinary ribbons, though; the twins' gloves contained a device that transmitted an electrical current into the ribbons, changing them from flimsy things to sharp, deadly lashes that sparked when they struck something.

Dick was ably dodging the twins' lashes; as agile as he was, the twins were no slouches when it came to agility. They were nowhere near his level, but probably good enough to be fierce competitors in Olympic gymnastic contests. That made them somewhat of a challenge . . . _somewhat._

_Time to stop playing around,_ he thought; he pulled out razor-edged Batarangs and threw them into seemingly empty space. They appeared to miss, prompting the cocky twins to lash at him with their ribbons. The twins were surprised, though, when the Batarangs returned and cut the ribbons in two. In fact, they were so surprised that they couldn't react in time to stop Dick from knocking them unconscious with swift chops to the backs of their necks.

Dick smirked. "Anyone else?"

The other Jokerz moved to attack and that was when Dick burst into a flurry of movement, dodging candied explosives and acid pies and smashing faces with his fists and feet. Suddenly, a small but clear clinking noise could be heard, as though something small and metallic had struck a nearby surface. That was all the warning the Jokerz got before a cloaked teenage boy in white and black descended from the shadows alongside a masked girl clad in black and translucent purple. The two youths dived immediately into the fray . . . and the boy unsheathed the sword strapped to his hip.

_Oh, no . . ._ Dick thought.

To his surprise, while the boy was slashing the Jokerz, he didn't seem to be going out of his way to give them fatal wounds. The wounds he was dealing were easily survivable, provided the blood loss was stopped in time. When he wasn't slicing them with his sword, he was brutally striking them with the hilt of the blade, hitting them with his brass-knuckled fists, or kicking them with his reinforced boots.

Beside him, the girl wearing Dick's former symbol was an exhibition of unearthly grace and agility. She almost literally danced through the Jokerz' attacks, but her strength was something else entirely. With singular blows, punches and kicks enhanced by flashes of purple energy, she sent sundry Jokerz practically flying before they landed on the ground. And they couldn't touch her . . . no matter what they did, they couldn't even get close.

Dick quickly got his head back in the game despite all temptation to watch the two youths. He added his own skill and experience to the fray, mostly neutralizing the Jokerz that tried to sneak up on the youths. After several minutes of frenetic activity, the Jokerz were all fleeing for the lives, the ones that were still conscious enough to flee, that was.

"Damian. Mar'i. Where have you been?"

"With someone who actually wanted us around."

"What gave you the idea that I didn't want you?" Dick asked.

The girl pulled her mask down, revealing the face of Mar'i Grayson. "Whose face do you see when you look at me? Mine, or Mom's?"

Dick looked at her, taken aback by her question, which gave Mar'i the opportunity to continue. "Since Mom died, I've spent more time with Uncle Tim, with Uncle Roy, with Uncle Jason, with even Grandpa Bruce, than with you, my own father. Why? Is it that painful?"

"Mar'i, I . . ." Dick started to say, but his response died in his throat.

Damian held his sword tightly, watching Mar'i pour her heart out to her father. "You hurt her," he snarled, _the demon_ growing stronger. "She loves . . . with everything in her being. Even people others don't think are worth loving. And you spat on that. For something as weak and insipid as grief."

Dick glared at Damian, who stared right into that glare with one of his own. "She saved me . . . from myself. From tearing myself apart. And as much as I hate you, she loves you. So let her save you. Or I'll send you to join Father."

"Are you going to come back?" Dick asked.

"Don't hold your breath."

_

* * *

_

Two years later

* * *

"What made you change your mind?" Dick asked, wearing the Batman costume minus the cowl.

Damian stood in a short-sleeved black suit with a burnt gold birdlike symbol spreading across his chest and onto his shoulders, a red stripe extending from the bottom of that symbol and splitting to cover the insides of his legs. Black steel-toed combat boots and black gloves added to the uniform, along with a dull gold utility belt with a birdlike buckle and a feathery-scalloped black cape. A birdlike domino mask completed the uniform.

"Batman needs Robin," was the young man's terse answer.

Dick took a breath. "If you're going to be Robin, I expect you to follow my orders precisely. The chief order is this: You're a protector, not a punisher. You don't kill. You disable, you incapacitate, but you _do not kill._ Am I understood?"

Damian's terse nod was Dick's only answer.

"Welcome, Robin."

* * *

End Notes: That's the first "Secret Origin" of the series. You now have an idea what exactly made Damian Wayne into the Robin you saw in chapter 1, but if you want to know more, you'll have to wait for the "Secret Origin" of Mar'i Grayson, as her story intertwines with Damian's. In the meantime, I'd like to know what you thought of this, whether good or bad.


	6. Secret Origins: Mar'i Grayson

"Titans: Legacies"

Secret Origins 2: "A Supernova in the Dark"

"The Secret Origin of Mar'i Grayson"

Disclaimer: The characters here largely belong to DC Comics, not me. I make no profit from this story except satisfaction that someone has read it.

Author's note: Damian Wayne has had his story told, and now it's time for Mar'i Grayson's story to be told. How did she become Nightstar? What forces shaped her young life to make her the young woman seen in the first four chapters of this story? Here's the answer, in as full and satisfactory a form as I can give it to you. Enjoy, I hope.

* * *

"_Mar'i . . . your mom's not coming home._"

"_Why not? Where is she?_"

"_She . . . she's dead._"

"_No. No, you're lying. She's not dead._"

"_Mar'i –_"

"_She's not! She's not! She's NOT!_"

* * *

That was two years ago. Two years ago, survivors of lost universes had attempted to recreate their lost worlds, but at the cost of the world that existed now. The heroes of this world had acted, wherever they could, to stop those renegades, but many of them had died in the process of saving their world. One of those heroes had been the Tamaranean warrior princess Koriand'r, known to those on Earth as Starfire.

And Kory was Mar'i Grayson's mother.

At the moment, Mar'i was practicing with various throwing implements – shuriken, kunai, darts, and . . . sharpened pencils. Yes, sharpened pencils, because Roy Harper was teaching her that anything that could be thrown and was vaguely aerodynamic could be used as a weapon. Mar'i, at the tender age of six, was too young to find the idea ridiculous and thus she was throwing the sharpened pencils along with the shuriken, kunai, and darts. She threw them at the silhouette targets thirty meters away.

"You're not bad," Roy remarked, watching Mar'i from twenty feet away.

"Thanks, Uncle Roy," Mar'i answered, her attention not once being diverted from the targets.

"Throwing those things a little hard, aren't you?"

"Long as I hit the target."

"Who are you imagining as the target?"

"Who says I am?"

"You're throwing like you want to hurt someone."

"I don't want to hurt anyone."

"Come on, you can tell Uncle Roy." Roy's tone was coaxing, cajoling.

Mar'i refused to fall for it, insisting on throwing a dart particularly hard at a silhouette target. The dart hit the target square in what would have been the forehead if it had been given any sort of distinctive features. She picked up the shuriken, ready to throw it at another target, when Roy lunged and caught her wrist with surprising alacrity for a physically normal human.

"That's enough for today, Mar'i."

Mar'i roughly wrenched her wrist free of Roy's grip, accidentally slicing his hand in the process with the shuriken still in her hand. "X'Hal! Uncle Roy, are you ok?! I'm sorry!"

"It's ok, Mar'i." Roy's expression was half smile, half grimace. He merely tore some fabric off his sleeve and tied it around his hand as a makeshift bandage to stop the bleeding. He retrieved a first aid kit and opened it, using an antiseptic to clean his wound and then wrapping a gauze bandage around his hand.

"You're pretty good at that," Mar'i remarked.

Roy smiled. "Comes with the territory, Starshine."

"_Don't call me that!_" Mar'i exploded. "Only my _mom_ gets to call me that!" Without another word, Mar'i half-stormed, half-floated away, leaving behind a saddened Roy Harper.

* * *

The next day, when Mar'i came to visit Roy and apologize, the door was answered by his daughter Lian, who stomped on Mar'i's foot and punched her in the jaw. "That's for hurting Daddy."

"I wanna say sorry," Mar'i said.

"You better!" Lian retorted.

"I can't say sorry if you don't let me come in."

Lian rolled her eyes and pulled Mar'i inside. "Daddy, Mar'i's here and she wants to say she's sorry!"

"Actually, she already said she was sorry," Roy remarked as he came downstairs to meet Lian and Mar'i. "Hey, Dart. Hey, Mar'i."

"I'm sorry, Uncle Roy," Mar'i whispered.

"All's forgiven." Roy chuckled and ruffled Mar'i's hair. "Besides, I know you didn't mean it." He smiled. "I'm having dinner with the other Arrows, Dinah, and Hal. You wanna come with?"

"Ok!" Mar'i paused after that joyful shout. "Wait, I have to tell my daddy first!"

"That's all right, I'll let him know," Roy answered.

That night, Mar'i was having dinner with the Arrows. Oliver Queen, the first Green Arrow, sat at the head of the table, with Roy and Dinah Lance sitting closest to him and Hal Jordan and Connor Hawke sitting next to Roy and Dinah respectively. Lian sat next to Hal and Mar'i sat across from Lian, next to Connor. The spirit of that particular dinnertime was quite lively, with animated conversation between everyone present.

"How's the League going?" Ollie asked Dinah and Roy.

"Going great," Dinah replied.

"And how is my favorite chairperson dealing with Batman?" Ollie asked.

"He's gotten worse since he had to start taking care of that kid," Dinah answered.

"You mean Damian?" Mar'i asked.

"That's the one," Dinah replied with an impish grin. "I've met the kid and he's kind of a brat, really. I don't know how Bruce deals with him."

"Probably has to spank him senseless every night," Ollie remarked, drawing manful giggles from Roy and Hal.

"Where's Aunty Mia?" Lian asked.

"Babysitting Olivia," Dinah replied.

"Does Olivia puke on her?" was Lian's morbid question.

"Maybe," Ollie replied with a chuckle. "She certainly pukes on me."

"Yeah, but she's the cutest baby in the world, so it doesn't matter," Dinah added.

"Of course she's the cutest baby in the world," Hal remarked. "She's got your looks."

"I thought I was the cutest baby in the world," Lian pouted.

"You were," Roy answered. "Now you're the cutest seven-year-old in the world."

Lian preened visibly at that comment.

"And you don't puke most of the time," Roy added. "That puts you one-up on Olivia."

"Watch it, Roy," Ollie teased. "That's your sister you're talking about."

Connor looked at Mar'i, noticing that her expression was dismal. "What's wrong?"

"Everyone's so . . . happy," Mar'i replied.

"I don't see anything wrong with that." Connor looked at Mar'i more closely. "But that's not exactly the problem, is it?"

Mar'i looked down at what was left of her food, silently resuming eating. As she ate, Roy looked at her and wondered just what was happening in her house to make her like this. He silently wondered just what had happened to Dick to make Mar'i the subdued, almost broken creature he now saw eating mechanically.

_

* * *

_

Four years later

* * *

A ten-year-old Mar'i Grayson sat in the lap of one Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe, otherwise known as the "junior" Bird of Prey Misfit. At the moment, Charlotte was entertaining Mar'i with stories of her adventures with Huntress.

". . . and then she picked up her crossbow, pointed it at the guy, and said, 'Move and I'll make sure you live,'" Charlotte narrated. Catching Mar'i's confused expression, she clarified her earlier narration. "She meant that when she shot him, she'd shoot him some place that wouldn't kill him, but it'd make him hurt a lot. He talked. He sang like a canary!"

"Wow . . ." Mar'i was in awe.

"I know," Charlotte agreed. "Huntress is the best."

"Yeah . . . but my dad is even better than the best." Mar'i's smile was nothing short of a cross between proud and puckish.

Charlotte stuck out her tongue. "Yeah, but Huntress is the coolest Bird of Prey."

"And my dad is the coolest Titan _and_ Justice Leaguer."

"Hey, Huntress was in the League longer than your dad was."

"My dad _led_ his League."

"Duh! His _daddy_ put that League together. Of course he'd have your dad lead."

"My dad was leading teams since the first time he put the Titans together!"

"And Huntress was Oracle's first choice to be head operative after Black Canary left."

"And my dad's the first choice to lead any team that has him in it!"

"Are you two havin' yourselves another pissing match?" Zinda Blake asked cheerfully.

"No!" Mar'i and Charlotte shouted at the same time.

"Arm-wrestling match!" Charlotte declared.

"You're on!" Mar'i answered.

The two moved to the table and sat on opposing sides of that table. Fortunately, the table was small enough that it would easily accommodate their match, not to mention Mar'i's smaller arm. They slammed the elbows of their primary arms onto the table and clasped hands. "Three . . ." Charlotte counted.

"Two . . ." Mar'i continued.

"One," Charlotte finished. "Star –" She found the back of her arm immediately slammed down onto the table, Mar'i smirking triumphantly at her. "Hey! That wasn't fair! You didn't even let me finish!"

"Sorry," Mar'i said. "I thought you said 'start' already."

"Fine, best two out of three?"

"Go for it."

"Three."

"Two."

"One. Start."

Charlotte tried with every bit of her might to push Mar'i's arm down. Unfortunately, this turned out to provide yet another modern equivalent of the classic principle of "irresistible force vs. immovable object." To Charlotte's credit, Mar'i looked like she was concentrating pretty hard on pushing back against the much older girl's hand. The two girls fought hard against each other, but in the end Mar'i was victorious, slamming Charlotte's arm down hard. When Mar'i let go, Charlotte's hand was smoking and charred.

"Whoa!" Mar'i exclaimed. "Charlie! I'm sorry about –"

"Dunno how you did that," Charlotte remarked. "Some kind of friction thing?" She smiled at the distraught younger girl. "It's no problem; I heal fast. When I heal, though . . . three out of five?"

"I'll just wipe the floor with you again," Mar'i retorted.

"Don't get cocky, you little brat," Charlotte chided. "I have a few tricks up my sleeve."

Mar'i smiled. "You mind if I stay here with you a little longer? My dad may be better than the best but he's no fun."

Charlotte smiled back. "Sure! And after that, I'll teach you how to play the Yu-Gi-Oh card game. It's good for learning strategy! That's how I teach it to all the tykes who wanna be cool superheroes like me and Huntress!"

Mar'i giggled, her spirits quickly raised by Charlotte's effervescence. "_No wonder you two get along so well,_" Barbara Gordon's voice remarked sardonically on the wireless communication web networked throughout the Birds of Prey's Metropolis base. "_You're both ten-year-old girls._"

Charlotte stuck her tongue out at the wall, knowing Barbara would see it. "Spinster," she remarked childishly.

"_I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear that._"

_

* * *

_

Nine months later

* * *

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Dick asked Bruce.

"If they're going to take up our mantles after you, Tim, Cassandra, and I are gone, then yes," Bruce replied.

Dick and Bruce were watching their children, Mar'i Grayson and Damian Wayne, spar. Mar'i seemed to be holding back somewhat, but otherwise had little trouble with Damian. He might have been older than her, but she was just as tall as he was – if not somewhat taller – and thus her reach was just as good as his. As if that weren't enough, she was stronger, faster, more agile, and pretty much skilled enough to hold her own with Damian. In terms of martial prowess, Mar'i and Damian were dead even, but Damian was crippled by his lack of patience for anything besides direct force and Mar'i wasn't.

Damian threw another kick at Mar'i, only for Mar'i to duck and weave under his leg and grab said leg. While doing so, she chopped a nerve ending in the back of the calf of Damian's other leg, making him lose his balance. As the Son of the Bat fell, Mar'i dropped alongside him, twisting his leg in her hold and including one of his arms in that hold while her body pinned him.

"Let . . . go . . ." Damian growled.

"Nope!" Mar'i answered cheerfully.

"You're enjoying this, aren't you?" Dick remarked to Bruce.

"He needs to learn humility," Bruce answered.

Dick laughed. "That's rich, coming from you."

"I'm serious. He thinks his combat prowess alone will allow him to overpower his foes. He has to learn that he is not the absolute best and that there are those who can outmatch him or at least challenge him both physically and mentally."

"And that's why you let him spar with Mar'i; so he can learn to be humbler?"

"Well, he's regularly eating humble pie," Tim remarked dryly. "Maybe it'll take."

Dick stared intensely at the tableau before him, watching Damian struggle futilely in Mar'i's hold, Mar'i herself shifting to keep him pinned. "I think Damian can be a good kid . . ."

". . . but you don't trust him with Mar'i," Tim finished.

"No," Dick replied. "You've seen him when he gets fixated. He's as obsessive and vicious as Bruce can be –" Bruce glared sternly at Dick, but Dick continued on undaunted "– but he doesn't have the self-control to not turn violent when it comes to his fixations."

Bruce looked at him closely. "And you think Damian might become fixated on Mar'i."

"I think he's already getting there," Dick said. "I've seen the look in his eyes before they start sparring. It's . . ."

"What do you think the nature of this fixation is?" Bruce asked.

"I don't know whether he's just obsessed with beating her in a fight, or if there's anything in the vein of physical attraction, but he worries me," Dick replied.

"He wants her," Cass stated bluntly, having maintained stealthy, silent observation for the entire spar. "Wants to win her, by winning against her."

"I've seen that in some warrior cultures," Tim said. "You're not worthy of a life partner until you've proven you can hold your own against him or her in combat."

"What about Mar'i?" Dick asked.

"Passion," Cass replied. "Passion for the fight, with passion for Damian underneath. Doesn't quite recognize it for what it is, but he enflames her."

_

* * *

_

Seven months later

* * *

"What happened?" Dick asked Brenna Wade, the principal of Aubrey James Academy.

"Mr. Grayson, your daughter got into another fight," Principal Wade answered curtly. "Apparently, like the seven other fights she has gotten into over the course of this month, she decided to appoint herself 'defender of the downtrodden.'"

"I'm right here," Mar'i grumbled.

"Young lady, don't slouch," Principal Wade advised. "It's not ladylike."

"I'll sit as I will," Mar'i answered gutturally.

"Mar'i . . . what happened?" Dick asked.

"How come I'm the one sitting in here and not Herb? Or Jess? Or Bert? Or Robb? Or –"

"Is there a point to this?" Principal Wade asked.

Mar'i rose to her full seated height, her solid green eyes burning into the principal's eyes. "The point? The kids I named are bullies; they enjoy making people scared of them. I was only trying to show them that not everyone scares easy."

"It's one thing when you have superpowers to oppose bullies, but normal children get very scared of people that are bigger than them" was Principal Wade's response.

"I'm not normal" was Mar'i's simple, blunt statement.

"Mrs. Wade, Mar'i's been going through a rough time," Dick interceded. "Her grandfather, my father, he died two months ago. She's taking it rather hard."

"That doesn't mean she can beat up whomever she sees fit," Principal Wade answered.

"That's true, but . . ."

"I would suggest that she spend some time after school with the guidance counselor. If that isn't enough to curb her behavior, then I'll have to get tougher on her. Does that sound fair?"

"It sounds very fair," Dick conceded.

As Dick escorted Mar'i away from the academy, he looked at her. "What's happening to you, Mar'i?"

"As if you're around long enough to care," Mar'i spat. Without another word, she launched herself into the air and took flight, the only evidence of her movement a violet contrail.

_

* * *

_

Six months later

* * *

It was Mar'i's 12th birthday, a birthday she was spending away from her father, away from her Uncle Tim, away from her Uncle Roy, away from her best friend and surrogate sister Lian. She hadn't seen any of them since two months ago, when she'd flown away from home. She'd had enough, had enough of her father's distance, enough of him punishing her for still being alive when her mother wasn't.

She was lying on a ratty bed in a quasi-dilapidated apartment, watching the sunlight stream into the room through the window. She chanced a look at the floor and saw that Damian wasn't sleeping there. In fact, he wasn't anywhere within the room. She rose from her bed and went to the bathroom, starting up the shower and waiting for it to warm.

Just as she was about to enter, none other than Jason Todd barged in. "Sorry, Mar'i," he grunted. "Happy Birthday." He quickly departed the bathroom, leaving her alone once again.

"Thanks, Uncle Jason," Mar'i whispered.

That night, Mar'i glided above the gothic spires of Gotham City, sheathed in a form-fitting black costume with a translucent purple wing symbol emblazoned that made her look like a female Nightwing. Translucent purple combat bracers armored her forearms, while a mask growing from the collar of her costume covered everything but her hair. The sensors in her mask amplified her already unusually acute senses, allowing her to take in Gotham in all its blended beauty and ugliness as she soared above it.

"_D to M, do you copy, M?_" the voice of Damian Wayne asked from the radio transceiver built into her costume.

"Yes, D, I copy," Mar'i answered.

"'_Batman's' in trouble,_" Damian said. "_I'm already en route. Coming?_"

Mar'i swallowed. "Yes."

"_Uploading the coordinates into your sensors,_" Damian said.

Mar'i's visor shortly displayed a map of Gotham City with a blue bat symbol radiating from a hundred kilometers northeast of her position. That was the territory of the Jokerz, a street gang that dressed like clowns and jesters in homage to the deceased Joker. If her father was there . . . Mar'i swallowed, and propelled herself through the air so fast that she broke the sound barrier.

When she reached Jokerz territory, she found Damian there, garbed in the cloak and white-and-black body-sheath that served as his costume. He descended upon the Jokerz, sword unsheathed, and began mowing down their opposition with slashes from the blade and strikes with both the hilt and his limbs and appendages. Mar'i descended upon the clownish gangsters, defeating most of them with one precise blow for each. One had an elbow slammed into his stomach, another had a knee embedded in her midriff, a third was knocked down by a swift roundhouse kick, a fourth was struck in the chest with a starbolt-enhanced chop, and a fifth was hit directly in the sternum by a starbolt-enhanced palm thrust.

By the time it was over, the Jokerz who could still stand had fled. Dick Grayson, garbed in a streamlined version of the Batman costume, looked at Mar'i and Damian. "Where have you been?"

"With someone who actually wanted us around," Damian spat bitterly.

"What gave you the idea that I didn't want you?" Dick asked calmly.

Mar'i pulled down her mask so that it acted as a turtleneck collar for her neck. She walked up to her father, almost matching him in height upon standing close to him, and stared into his face, seeking his eyes through the whiteout lenses of his cowl. "Whose face do you see when you look at me? Mine, or Mom's?" When Dick didn't answer, she continued. "Since Mom died, I've spent more time with Uncle Tim, with Uncle Roy, with Uncle Jason, with even Grandpa Bruce, than with you, my own father. Why? Is it that painful to be near me?"

Dick tried to speak, but when he trailed off, Mar'i maintained the deluge of eight years of pain that she had kept welled up inside her. "It hurts, Dad. It hurts that you don't want to be around me."

"Is that why you ran off to Jason?" Dick asked.

"It's not like you wanted me around!" Mar'i shouted. "You didn't think I missed her, too?! That I wished we could have her back, too?! You lost a wife . . . I lost a mother." She placed her hand on Dick's chest, over his heart, and took his hand to place it over her heart. "Our pain is the same."

To her surprise, she heard Damian speak, his voice darkened and nearly inhuman with anger. "You hurt her. She loves . . . with everything in her being. Even people others don't think are worth loving. And you spat on that. For something as weak and insipid as grief."

Anger radiated from Dick in waves and he loosed himself from Mar'i's touch to stare down Damian, who simply continued, albeit in a softer voice. "She saved me . . . from myself. From tearing myself apart. And as much as I hate you, she loves you. So let her save you. Or I'll send you to join Father."

Mar'i had no idea what to say. In all the time she'd spent with Damian, she'd had no idea he felt so strongly about her. The passion in his voice was real, she could tell that much. She looked to her father, who seemed rather surprised as well that Damian could feel that strongly about anyone without wanting to harm them in some way.

"Are you going to come back?" he asked, speaking to both Mar'i and Damian.

Damian sneered. "Don't hold your breath."

Mar'i pulled her mask up to cover her face once again. "I will. Soon."

_

* * *

_

Two years later

* * *

"I suppose this couldn't be avoided," Dick uttered resignedly. "Your mother never liked to wear a lot of clothes, either."

He looked appraisingly at Mar'i, who was now a solid six feet tall and – to his chagrin – resembled a black-haired Koriand'r more than ever. She was wearing the same costume he'd seen her in on the night of her twelfth birthday, but it was heavily modified. The mask was gone and the wing symbol now served as the marker of the neckline, exposing her cleavage, which he was chagrined to admit would draw the eye of any hormonal adolescent. The legs of the costume had been cut away, making it a leotard, and her calves and feet were encased in black boots with translucent purple cuffs.

"Dad," Mar'i stated. "You don't have to panic. It's not the end of the world if I go out dressed like this. Besides, Mom went out like this all the time and you hardly raised an eyebrow."

"That . . . was different."

Mar'i scoffed. "Yeah. Different in the sense that she was my mother, not your daughter."

"Yeah. Just . . . try not to get yourself in trouble."

"I love you, too, Dad." Mar'i kissed Dick on the cheek and then turned to leave the Batcave.

"By the way, Damian came in here three nights ago wanting to be my Robin," Dick called out to his daughter. "Did you have something to do with that?"

"I might have nudged him in the right direction," Mar'i answered in singsong, gliding away from her father and out of the Batcave.

Dick sighed. "You'd be proud, Kory. You'd be proud."

* * *

End Notes: There we go. The Secret Origin of Mar'i Grayson is finished. Now, while some of it dovetails with Damian Wayne's origin story, I tried not to repeat myself too much and to keep the focus mostly on Mar'i. The next chapter is going to return to the main plot; this and the last chapter were more a diversion in the vein of the Secret Origins backups in issues of 52 and Countdown. Anyway, let me know what you think and see you next chapter.


	7. Recovery and Reprisal

"Titans: Legacies"

Chapter 5: "Recovery and Reprisal"

Disclaimer: Most of the characters depicted here belong to DC Comics and Time Warner, not to me.

Author's note: When last we left off, most of the Titans were in pretty bad shape and Olivia Queen had just encountered her mother's onetime ward Sin. What does Sin want with Olivia? How will the adult heroes deal with what has befallen their would-be successors? Will the Titans recover from this first volley of attacks? For the answers to those questions and others, read on.

* * *

"Talk about what?" Olivia asked.

"The League of Assassins," Sin replied. "They've made an alliance with Deathstroke."

"Deathstroke? Why?"

"It only makes sense. Both of them have their reasons to hate your parents."

"And yet those two archers came after me."

"For Oni, it's more personal. For Quincy, it's just a matter of what he's been assigned to do."

Just then, Olivia's cell phone rang. Olivia looked at the screen, seeing Lian's name on it. She quickly answered. "Hello?"

"Olivia . . . I'm in the Justice Society's infirmary," Lian replied. "It's pretty bad. The others, they –"

"They got attacked, too?" Olivia asked. "Who attacked them?"

"I only know who attacked Cerdian, because she came after me, too," Lian answered. "As for the others . . . I still don't know yet, but I'm going to find out and then they're going to pay."

"I'll help," Olivia stated simply.

"Good to hear," Lian replied. "I'd like my favorite cousin by my side. Come as fast as you can."

The tone that followed let Olivia know that the call had ended. Olivia put her cell phone away and looked at Sin. "They came after the other Titans, too."

"Be careful, sister," Sin advised. "They are not people to be trifled with."

Olivia chuckled. "Neither am I." She smiled. "I'd better see the others. Feel free to let yourself out."

* * *

In the Justice Society infirmary, Superman was looking at X-rays taken of Superboy by Dr. Mid-Nite. "Phantom Zone technology embedded in sunstones and then implanted inside him. I knew Zod was ruthless, but I didn't know he'd do this to his own son."

"These implants are like nothing I've ever seen before," Dr. Mid-Nite said. "But I suppose that's really how General Zod was able to use Superboy as an anchor to the material world all those years ago."

"Can we take them out?" Superman asked.

"Without killing him?" Dr. Mid-Nite added. "No. The implants have integrated with his neuromuscular structure over time; they're as essential to his living as his organic parts. Take them out, and he's as good as dead."

"Will he be all right?"

"Yes. He's healing quite well. He should be awake at any moment."

"What about the others?"

"We managed to stop Damian's blood loss; he should be waking up sooner or later. Mar'i's surgery was successful and she should be ok as well. It's Cerdian and Wally's twins that aren't so fortunate."

"What's wrong with them?"

Dr. Mid-Nite sighed. "Cerdian was imbued with corrupted Olympian magic and it's having a toxic effect on his Atlantean magic, which is in turn having a toxic effect on his body. While it enhances him when he uses it, the corrosive long-term effects on his body and psyche can't be ignored."

"And Iris and Jai?"

"Beaten to the edge of death. Iris is even worse off because she overtaxed her powers."

Superman looked at Dr. Mid-Nite. "You mean she attempted to stay charged up longer than it was safe for her to do so."

"That particular battle must have been tougher than we could have imagined, for her to risk that."

Superman looked in the window into the resting area of the infirmary, seeing Lian sitting next to Cerdian's bed, holding his hand. It never ceased to amaze him, the intensity of Lian's feelings for the younger boy. While some would call it unseemly for a girl on the verge of legal adulthood to date someone who would just be starting high school, he couldn't deny that they really did love each other.

"Will they be all right?" he finally asked.

"I don't think so," Dr. Mid-Nite replied. "While their metabolisms are trying to heal them, the injuries they've suffered are too extensive. If they live, they'll be crippled. If they don't . . ."

"Have you told Wally?"

"He hasn't come back yet. He's looking for the ones that did this to his children."

* * *

Meanwhile, Rose Wilson was standing out on the balcony of the apartment where she lived with her brother Joey when she felt a breeze. She turned and saw a young man garbed in cream with a lightning-edged red stripe running down the center of his uniform. Red fingerless gloves and boots with thick buckles covered his hands and feet and a red open cowl with goggle-like yellow lenses covered the upper half of his face.

"Impulse?" she wondered.

"I've come back to you, Rose," "Impulse" whispered. "I had to. It's you I love. It's you I've always loved. And I know . . . you've always loved me."

"Bart . . ." Rose uttered. Then she got a good look at him, specifically the hair sticking out of the top of his cowl. It was blond . . . and neater than Bart's hair had ever been. She narrowed her eyes furiously. "You're not Bart. Who are you?"

"Impulse" chuckled and quick-changed into a similar outfit, only colored black and green instead of cream and red. "Inertia."

Rose rushed at Inertia, aiming a fast punch for his face. Inertia dodged the punch and grabbed Rose's outstretched arm, twisting it behind her back. Rose thrust her free arm back at Inertia in a chop, only for Inertia to catch that and pin it in front of her.

"I have no idea what you saw in Bart Allen," Inertia whispered harshly. "I'm ten times better than he ever was."

"No," Rose retorted harshly. "You're ten times _lesser_ than him." She stomped on his foot with her heel and then slammed her elbow into his gut fast enough to slip past his guard. Inertia recovered and zoomed at her for a clothesline, only for Rose to bend over backwards to evade his arm. Rose went into a backwards handspring and slid into a low kick aimed to trip Inertia, who simply sped behind her and put her in a chokehold.

Rose slammed her elbow into Inertia's groin, forcing him to let go of her. She tumbled backward and into a kick to Inertia's chin, while another wind – this one harsher – could be felt. Rose looked and saw the Flash with his hands wrapped around Inertia's throat.

"Go after my kids? _My kids?!_" he screamed. "Do you even know who I _am?!_ What I'll _do?!_"

Suddenly, Wally's eyes glowed green and he let go of Inertia's throat. "Joey, what are you doing?"

_Stopping you from doing something you'll regret for the rest of your life,_ Joey answered in his thoughts. _You're not a killer, Wally. Don't let Inertia make you one._

"He went after my kids!" Wally yelled. "And he just came after Rose!"

_It doesn't mean we become killers. We are supposed to be better than that._

Inertia looked from Wally to Rose to Wally again. "I don't know what stopped you, but you're going to regret not following through. In the meantime, see to your brats. You're going to have to bury them soon."

He sped away and Wally wanted with every inch of his being to follow Inertia and kill him, but Joey's presence in his body was currently preventing him from doing so. "Let me go."

_So you can kill Inertia? No thanks. You're staying here until you're calmed down._

"Let me see my kids," Wally pleaded.

_That I can do,_ Joey answered, releasing himself from Wally's body. Wally looked at Joey crossly.

"Don't ever do that again, ok?"

Joey nodded and signed, _I'll stay with Rose._

"Thanks, Joey, but I'm perfectly fine," Rose answered.

_Physically,_ Joey signed.

"And what does _that_ mean?"

Joey just looked at her somberly and turned to Wally . . . only Wally was gone. _Like Batman . . ._

* * *

When Wally reached the Justice Society's infirmary, he found Dick Grayson, Roy Harper, Garth, and Donna Troy there looking over the still-bedridden Titans. Olivia, Lian, and Dolphin were there, too, and Lian and Dolphin were on literally opposite ends of Cerdian, who wore a breathing mask that pumped water vapor into his lungs. It didn't escape Wally's notice that Dolphin was glaring at Lian and vice versa, but then Dolphin had never liked the Titans.

"What's going on?" Wally asked. "Any change?"

"Damian's awake," Dick replied. "And we know who did this to them."

"Who?" Wally asked.

"Slade," Roy spat. "He put together a team to take out our kids."

Dolphin's glare remained fixed on Lian, as though she saw the younger female as the source of all her troubles. As far as Dolphin was concerned, she was. If it wasn't for the little air-breather slut seducing her son, he never would have been in that kind of danger in the first place. Now he was lying helplessly in bed, being slowly killed by evil magic, and _that girl_ dared to sit by his side as though she really gave a damn about him at all.

"Stop it, Dolphin," Garth whispered. "It's not Lian's fault this happened to Cerdian."

"No, it's yours," Dolphin answered bitterly. "If you hadn't introduced him to your Titan friends, then he'd have never met Harper's girl and he'd be safe in Atlantis."

"Hey!" Roy cut in. "I get that you're worried about your kid, just as worried as I'd be about Lian if she were in his place, but that doesn't give you the right to insult us."

"She _isn't_ in his place," Dolphin retorted. "In fact, it's because of her that he's in this place. He should have been recovering back home, but instead he charges out with evil magic burning him alive from inside to protect _her._"

"Because they love each other," Donna interceded. "Plain and simple."

"I think . . . I know a way to save him," Garth said.

"What is it?" Lian asked.

"I can isolate Lyta's curse and seal it away," Garth replied. "It should force the curse into remission and he'll be able to recover."

"Will it work?" Donna asked.

"It should," Garth replied, beginning to outline Cerdian's body with Atlantean runes. As soon as he finished, his eyes glowed purple and the runes glowed as well. He grabbed Cerdian's wrist, where the spidery mark was, and the runes floated off the bed and fused to Cerdian before "melting" into his body. Cerdian's body twitched on the bed, going into small spasms, but Garth held him down until the spasms ceased.

Immediately, some color came to Cerdian's face, causing both Lian and Dolphin to sigh with relief. His eyes, a glimmering purple, opened. "Hi . . ."

"Cerdian!" Lian greeted, hugging him tightly. Cerdian returned the hug, holding back his strength so that he didn't hurt her too much. Dolphin scowled at the happy couple, but otherwise didn't say a word.

Just then, Damian interrupted. "What about Mar'i and Chris? Are they all right?"

"They're recovering just fine," Donna replied.

Damian got out of bed, detaching himself from the monitors, and walked to Mar'i's bed. He stared down at her sleeping face, so peaceful. He wished she would wake up. He wished she would wake up so that he could know that she was all right. He wished she would wake up so that he could know that she was alive. He wished she would wake up so that her life and light could fill the room . . . and brighten the corners of his blighted psyche.

He looked past Mar'i and saw Superboy, his eyes beginning to open. Damian moved over to him, Dick following him. "Hi."

"Hey," Superboy replied. "Where's Dad?"

"He was here before, but he had to leave to do his patrol of Metropolis," Dick answered. "He was pretty worried about you."

"He always worries," Superboy remarked quietly.

"Who did this to you?" Damian asked.

"A girl calling herself Ultrawoman," Superboy replied. "She was . . . so strong. And so vicious. It was . . . inhuman."

"She can't hurt you anymore," Dick said.

"No," Superboy answered somberly, "but she can hurt someone else. I can't let that happen." He started to climb out of bed, with Dick and Damian simultaneously reaching out to hold him back. Superboy gently but firmly pushed past them. "I can't let her hurt anybody else."

"You're not up to full strength yet," Dick warned.

"No, but I know a way I can use more of what I've got," Superboy answered.

"You're not talking about what I think you're talking about, are you?" Damian asked.

"Yes," Superboy confirmed grimly.

"You can't," Damian snarled. "You know what that type of Kryptonite does to you."

"I know. It makes me more ruthless, and ruthless is something I need to be if I'm going to beat her."

"You don't have to sink to her level," Dick said.

"Who says I'm going to? I just have to beat her and then I'll take the damn thing off."

"Who says you'll want to take it off? It's like a drug; the rush of power and invincibility will make you want to keep it," Damian retorted.

"She beat me almost to death. I did everything I could . . . and none of it worked. She just kept coming. She was too strong, too fast, too brutal, and too relentless for me to stop her."

"So that's what this is about," Damian sneered. "She made you feel helpless. For all your power, when you met someone stronger than you, there was nothing you could do to stop her. She humiliated you."

"That's not it. She has to be stopped before she can hurt more people."

"Very true, but wouldn't it be nice if you could give her a taste of your own medicine, make her feel the same terror you did?" Damian went on, his voice darkly honeyed. "And you can't do that as 'the heir of Superman.' But you can do it as Lore, can't you?"

"It doesn't matter!" Superboy exploded. "She has to be stopped! She's a killer, a vicious, murderous sociopath and I'm going to make sure she never hurts anyone again!" He sped out of the infirmary, moving too fast for normal human eyes to detect, but not too fast for Wally or Donna.

* * *

"I'll catch him," Wally said, speeding after Superboy. "Hey! You are aware that you're barely wearing anything, right?!"

"I'll get something to wear," Superboy retorted.

"Not the point!" Wally shouted. "You're gonna do something you'll regret! I'm just here to make sure you don't go through with it!"

"Just let me get dressed first," Superboy answered, reaching the apartment where he lived with Clark Kent and Lois Lane. He slipped inside at super-speed, dressed himself at super-speed, and exited at super-speed. When he exited, he was dressed in a black-and-blood-red motorcycle jacket over a tight black T-shirt and black leather pants with black combat boots.

"You look like you're going to some vampire club," Wally remarked dryly.

"No . . ." Chris Kent answered darkly. "I'm going to hell. And Ultrawoman's my date."

"You've been watching too many gritty action movies," Wally commented. "What would Clark say?"

Chris glared at Wally, his eyes beginning to glow at the edges. "You're not going to stop me."

"You've been running instead of flying, so I think you _do_ want me to stop you."

"Really? See if you can stop this." Chris suddenly moved into a blurring run, the blur worsened by a warping aura surrounding him. Wally sped after Chris, trying to keep up with him, but Chris seemed to be so much faster than he'd been before. That didn't matter; he had to stop the Kryptonian teen before he did something stupid . . . and possibly spank him for being such a presumptuous brat when he did catch up to him.

_That warping aura's got something to do with him being so fast,_ Wally thought. _It's like he's not quite in the same zone as I am._

Wally accelerated, pushing himself to move faster in order to grab Chris, who simply moved even faster. Finally, Chris seemed to vanish altogether, leaving Wally dismayed. _What the hell am I gonna tell Clark?_

* * *

Chris materialized in the Batcave, looking for the supply of Kryptonite Paladin kept there. He knew Paladin had red Kryptonite somewhere among the samples and he needed it. He just hoped he could do it before Paladin or Batman came back; he didn't need the headache of them trying to stop him. Thus, he sat in front of the massive computer and applied his "super-brain" to hacking into it so he could discover the location of the Kryptonite.

It took him fifteen minutes, but he managed to wrangle the location of the Kryptonite out of the computer. He stood up from the computer and moved to get at the Kryptonite when he walked into Tim. Literally, and Tim didn't look all that pleased. That was perfectly understandable, of course; Chris had broken into the cave and was trying to steal from it.

"Tim. Move."

"No. You move."

Chris shifted between dimensions, emerging on the other side near the Kryptonite supply. He opened the case, only to suddenly be overwhelmed with pain from the green Kryptonite. He knew there was some red Kryptonite in there and he needed to grab it. Thus, fighting off utter agony, he reached into the Kryptonite supply and pulled out a small red Kryptonite rock.

"Did it . . ." he snarled, just as Tim had arrived to stop him.

"Chris, put that back now," Tim ordered.

Chris glared at Tim with glowing red eyes. "You're not the boss of me." He slipped the red Kryptonite into his shirt pocket and pressed it hard against his skin, almost as though he were trying to embed it inside him.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I wasn't strong enough before. Because I wasn't ruthless enough before. Now I am . . . and she's dust."

He dimensionally shifted again, leaving Tim alone in the Batcave. He figured Tim had come back from patrol early, possibly alerted by Wally. Well, he'd have to do something about Wally when all was said and done, but right now Ultrawoman was going to receive a taste of her own medicine. And bitter medicine it would be.

* * *

What serendipity it turned out to be, when he spotted his adoptive father fighting Ultrawoman, who seemed to be giving him a tough time. Superman, might Rao damn his cowardly soul, was making the same mistakes Chris had made without the red Kryptonite. Worrying about the safety of others, worrying about that pathetic code against killing, and Ultrawoman was taking advantage of those worries. It was high time she met someone who could fight her on an even playing field.

"Stand back, 'Dad,'" Chris sneered. "She's mine now."

"Superboy!" Superman shouted. "What are you doing here?"

"Payback," Chris replied cruelly. "And it's Lore."

That said, he flew straight up into Ultrawoman's face with a vicious uppercut, knocking her higher into the air. Ultrawoman righted herself in midair, smirking cruelly. "Whaddaya know, the little p#$$ can throw a punch after all! Where'd you get the balls for something like that?"

Lore chuckled sadistically and popped sunstone claws from the back of each knuckle. "You're going to die." As Ultrawoman dived toward him, Lore slashed at her with his claws, only for Ultrawoman to catch his wrist. Undeterred, Lore simply twisted into a vicious kick to her face, following up by stabbing her in her bare belly with his claws and twisting the blades. Ultrawoman smirked at him.

"I like your foreplay."

"Prepare to like it a lot less," Lore snarled, just before Ultrawoman pushed him off her, the claws wetly sliding out of her stomach.

"What are you doing, Superboy?" Superman asked, trying to hold him back.

"F#$ off," Lore snarled, teleporting out of Superman's grip. "Ultrawoman's going to die and I'm the one who's going to do it."

"Me? Die? You must be joking," Ultrawoman sneered, firing a blast of heat vision at Lore, who retaliated with a heat vision blast of his own. The two beams of heat collided and pushed against each other. As the heat grew in intensity, the sky began to sear and turn red. The more each combatant poured into their attack, the hotter the sky grew.

Suddenly, Superman materialized between both combatants, punching them both hard to make them stop, the heat vision fizzling out. "_That is enough!_ You were going to get everyone on this planet _burned alive!_"

"Who cares?" Ultrawoman sneered. "It's the fact that you worry so much about those weaklings that makes you so weak. And really . . . _my dad hits harder than you!!_"

She flew right in front of Superman at hyper-speed, backhanding him so hard he crashed to the ground. Superman tasted blood in his mouth and dodged Ultrawoman's next attack, grabbing her by the wrist and tossing her into the sky. She twisted in midair and into a kick to Lore, who blocked it with a sunstone spike protruding from his wrist, impaling her foot. Ultrawoman pulled her foot off and delivered a fast roundhouse kick with her healthier foot, which Lore grabbed and twisted. Ultrawoman attempted to head-butt him, but Lore punched her square in the nose.

Lore popped a sunstone spike out of his wrist, prepared to impale Ultrawoman's heart on it when two pairs of strong arms grabbed him and pulled him off her. "Get. The. F#$. Off. Of. Me. Now."

Superwoman and Power Woman looked at him sternly. "I don't know what you're thinking, Superboy, but this isn't a path you want to walk," Superwoman said.

"What she said, plus if you keep acting like this, we're gonna have to spank you," Power Woman added.

"Everyone keeps getting in my way!" Lore screamed, popping sunstone spikes out of his arms to force Superwoman and Power Woman off him. He locked eyes with Ultrawoman. "DIE!!!"

Just before Lore could land the killing blow, Superman punched him, sending him crashing to the ground. "I'm sorry, Christopher," he whispered, "but I can't let you become a killer."

"My name isn't Christopher," Lore snarled as he got up. He flew back up and delivered a ferocious kick to Superman's midsection. Superwoman and Power Woman were immediately on him, Lore brutally fighting them off. Heat vision blasts were deflected by crossed sunstone blades, and then Lore flew at the two Kryptonian women with those same sunstone blades extended.

"Red K," Superwoman deduced.

"Kid's insane if he's messing with that stuff," Power Woman muttered, catching Lore's arm and breaking off his sunstone blade. Superwoman did the same with his other arm, just as Superman flew in front of them.

"Stop this, Christopher," Superman ordered. "Now."

"I'm not stopping until she's dead!" Lore snarled. He teleported again, this time materializing behind Ultrawoman, who elbowed him hard in the midsection and flipped him over her shoulder. Lore quickly recovered and punched Ultrawoman in the face with small sunstone spikes on his knuckles. Ultrawoman glared at him with a bloody face and fired another blast of heat vision at him, one which he deflected with another sunstone blade.

Team Superman was on both combatants in a flash, neither teen reacting favorably to their interference. "I'll kill you . . ." Lore snarled at Ultrawoman. ". . . but right now, I want them out of the way of our fight."

"Ah, I get it," Ultrawoman purred. "Truce, and then we go back to beating the f#$ out of each other. Sounds good."

"Let's do it," Lore snarled.

"You brat," Power Woman groaned. "Now you're _definitely_ getting that spanking."

* * *

End Notes: There you have it. Superboy has been driven to the dark side of the proverbial Force by his desire to defeat Ultrawoman and now they're working together to take down those who would interfere with their fight. Will Team Superman be able to shake Superboy to his senses? Will Ultrawoman be defeated? Will Excel, Impulse, and Nightstar fully recover from their injuries? For the answers to those questions and others, read on and let me know what you thought of this chapter.


	8. Awaken, Little Evil Inside

"Titans: Legacies"

Chapter 6: "Awaken, Little Evil Inside"

Disclaimer: Teen Titans and the larger universe it inhabits belong to DC Comics and Time Warner, not me. I make no monetary profit from this story whatsoever, only grim satisfaction that someone is reading this.

Author's note: Where were we? Oh, yes; Chris Kent went to the dark side of the Force, in a manner of speaking, so that he could kill Ultrawoman. Wally West confronted Inertia, and who knows if Mar'i Grayson is ever going to wake up? Well, she will; a tough cookie like her doesn't stay down very long. Anyway, enough talking; it's time for the story to start.

* * *

"Go," Lore snarled and pointed at Superman, who suddenly vanished, a spatial distortion visible where he used to be.

"What did you do?" Power Woman asked angrily.

"I sent him away," Lore replied coldly. "Would you like to join him?"

Power Woman's response was a blast of heat vision that Lore blocked with a multitude of sunstone crystals growing out of his forearm. He flew at her with the sunstone crystals pointed at her, only for her to grab his forearm and knee him in the solar plexus. Lore gasped for breath but recovered . . . and Power Woman disappeared in the same spatial distortion as her cousin.

Superwoman looked at Lore and Ultrawoman and flew into an attack on Lore, only to be blocked by Ultrawoman, who delivered a vicious uppercut to her chin. Superwoman quickly recovered and dived after Ultrawoman, who sidestepped her attack and kicked her in the stomach. Superwoman righted herself in midair and fired a blast of heat vision at Ultrawoman, who crossed her arms to block it. The blast burned her forearms, but the burns quickly healed, leaving Ultrawoman free to attack Superwoman. Before she could, however, Superwoman vanished in another spatial distortion.

Ultrawoman growled angrily at Lore. "What was that about?"

"We only need them out of our way," Lore answered icily. "We don't need to kill them."

"Fine," Ultrawoman sneered. "Besides, I can just kill you!"

With a burst of inhuman speed, Ultrawoman moved to uppercut Lore, only for Lore to block her punch. "How . . ."

"Trade secret," Lore answered, and backhanded her viciously. Ultrawoman plummeted toward the street far below, Lore speeding in front of her to accelerate her descent. This time, Ultrawoman blocked his strike and used him as a support to right herself in midair. Lore grew a sunstone crystal spike out of his forearm, impaling Ultrawoman's hand. Ultrawoman smirked and pulled her hand off the spike, letting the wound heal before striking Lore again. Again, Lore blocked the blow and brutally swatted her down.

Ultrawoman quickly recovered and fired a blast of heat vision at Lore, who crossed his arms and blocked with a massive outgrowth of sunstone crystals. He retracted most of the crystals once the blast had dissipated, only to find Ultrawoman standing very close to him. She swung at him, only for him to block the swing and twist her arm behind her back. Ultrawoman slammed her elbow into his stomach, loosening his grip enough for her to wrench herself loose and punch him multiple times at super-speed. To her astonishment, Lore managed to block most of her punches.

"How did you get so fast?" Ultrawoman asked.

"Like I said, trade secret," Lore replied with a vicious smirk.

Ultrawoman swung at Lore, only for Lore to seemingly vanish. When he reappeared, he did so behind her and aimed a punch at the back of her head. Ultrawoman tilted her head to avoid the punch and whirled into a super-fast kick to Lore, who barely blocked. Lore used Ultrawoman's shin as a fulcrum and flipped himself up into a vicious kick to her face. Ultrawoman retaliated with a brutal punch to his face, which Lore ducked under.

Suddenly, a bolt of purple lightning struck Ultrawoman, the lightning quickly taking on the shape of Lyta. "That's enough, Ultrawoman," she said. "Deathstroke wants you back. Now."

"_No!_" Ultrawoman yelled. "I'm not leaving until he dies!"

Lyta pinned Ultrawoman with a glare that could turn titanium to rust. "You. Come with me. Now."

Ultrawoman snarled, but sagged slightly. "Fine."

"Did I say you could leave yet?" Lore asked menacingly.

Lyta turned to Lore. "You don't get a say in this. Go away." She fired a bolt of purple lightning through the left side of his chest, shattering the red Kryptonite shard he had been keeping in his pocket. The force of the blast was such that Lore found himself falling toward the street. Fortunately, he had enough presence of mind to warp himself through the Phantom Zone into the Batcave. When he looked up, he found Superman, Superwoman, and Power Woman – not to mention Paladin – looking down at him.

* * *

To his surprise, Superman gently picked up Chris and carried him to a medical cot, laying him down on it. "We're going to take care of that wound first. And then we're going to have a long talk about the dangers of red Kryptonite."

Chris groaned. _That's not going to be fun._

"And we're also going to have a long talk about stealing from the Batcave," Paladin added.

"Not to mention attacking your favorite cousins," Superwoman joined in.

* * *

Meanwhile, Olivia arrived in the JSA infirmary. "How's Mar'i?"

"She should be waking up at any time," Dick replied.

"I've got some bad news," Olivia said. "The people who went after us? They were working with Deathstroke."

"We already know," Roy replied. "Damian told us."

"It's worse than just Deathstroke," Olivia continued. "It's the League of Assassins, too. Merlyn's faction, if Sin's info is correct."

"Merlyn?" Roy repeated. "_He's_ in on this?"

"Yeah," Olivia confirmed. She moved over to Mar'i's bedside and picked up her hand gently. To her relief, Mar'i squeezed her hand gently.

"Hey . . ." Mar'i greeted softly.

"Mar'i . . ." Olivia whispered.

"Is Damian ok?"

"Yeah, he's fine. He was even so kind as to tell the grown-ups who exactly sent those guys after us."

"Deathstroke?" Mar'i sat up and looked up at Dick. Then she turned to Iris and Jai. "Why haven't they woken up yet?"

"Iris and Jai's attackers did quite a number on them," Lian replied. "They beat them so badly they might be crippled if they ever wake up."

"Is there anything we can do?" Mar'i asked.

"No, there isn't," Dr. Mid-Nite replied. "I've done all I can. It's up to them now."

Mar'i let out a low, hissing growl. "Deathstroke . . . I'm going to rip him apart for this."

"Mar'i, you can't . . ." Dick started to say, but Mar'i cut him off.

"He's a damned psychopath and I am going to see to it that he never hurts anyone I care about again. The way _you_ should have done instead of letting him run wild for all these years."

Dick bit his tongue, shamefacedly. He hated to admit it, but Mar'i was right. Whatever he might have believed Slade Wilson was, whatever good he might have seen in the man once . . . that person no longer existed. That person had ceased to exist the moment he had manipulated his own daughter into taking up the mantle of Ravager and becoming a killer in her own right. The final nail in that man's coffin had been Blüdhaven.

Just then, Dinah and Ollie teleported in. "We came as soon as we could," Dinah said. "What happened?"

"The League of Assassins and Deathstroke is what happened," Olivia replied. "Deathstroke assembled a team to take us down, and at least two of its members are from the League of Assassins. One of them claims to be my brother."

"Which one?" Ollie asked warily.

"He called himself Oni," Olivia replied.

Ollie nearly collapsed, and it was only Dinah's steadying hand on his arm that kept him from doing so. "I was afraid of this . . ."

"Afraid of what?" Olivia asked. "What is it?"

Ollie sighed ruefully. "There was another archer I was working with, during my time in Seattle. One night, things went bad. I got hurt pretty badly, and while I was delirious, she . . ."

Olivia's eyes widened in shock and horror, deducing what her father was desperately trying not to say. "You mean she . . ."

"Yeah," Ollie admitted. "And then a few years later, she showed up with a kid. Said he was mine, but that she didn't want me having anything to do with him." Ollie rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It was years ago, but I never stopped thinking about that kid. Late at night, from time to time, I'd ask myself if it was right to leave him with his mother."

"Why didn't you tell me I had another brother?" Olivia asked.

"The way it happened, it wasn't something to burden a child with." Ollie's tone was apologetic as he said that, but it didn't sit very well with Olivia.

"I'm _not_ a child. Not anymore. And I have a right to know."

Dinah looked at Olivia sternly. "I don't care if he is your brother; he's already tried to kill you once. I don't want you going after him with some crazy idea of turning him into a good guy."

Olivia smiled a deadly smile. "When I go after him, it's not going to be for anything like that."

Dinah turned to Dr. Mid-Nite. "How are they doing?"

"Physically, most of them have recovered just fine," Dr. Mid-Nite replied. "As for Iris and Jai . . . it's not looking too good for them."

At that moment, Wally blurred into the infirmary. "How are they?"

"Not too good," Dr. Mid-Nite admitted. "I hate to say it, but unless we do something drastic, they might not make it."

Wally moved over to Iris and Jai, seeing them both absolutely unconscious and unmoving. He reached out to Iris first, touching her forehead with an ungloved hand. His eyes glowed with the Speed Force and lightning transferred from his hand into Iris. The lightning wrapped around Iris's body and caused her to twitch, her hands clenching and unclenching, her toes curling, her back arching, and her eyes snapping open with a lightning glow.

Iris fell back onto the bed, gasping for breath. She looked at Wally. "What was _that?_"

"Healing," Wally replied. He turned to Jai and did the same thing, with Jai reacting virtually identically to Iris.

"_Holy s#$!_" Jai exclaimed. "What did you do, inject me with adrenaline?"

"Better," Wally answered. "Speed Force."

Mar'i moved to Iris and hugged her tightly. "How do you feel?"

"Like I could take Savitrix over my knee and – _smack!_" Iris replied energetically.

"What about you?" Lian asked Jai.

"Like I could fight every last Rogue and win," Jai replied.

"Glad you guys are feeling so good," Olivia said.

"Now that we've gotten the joyfest out of the way, can we get back to the important things?" Damian asked sharply. "Like finding Deathstroke and taking him down?"

"Yes, Damian," Lian sneered. "Let's talk about how we're going to take down someone who can fight entire teams of metahuman heroes – most of whom are way more experienced than us – and walk away virtually unscathed. Do you have any ideas?"

"Wait, what about Mickey?" Mar'i asked.

"Who?" Jai asked.

"This girl in my school; Clayface kidnapped and impersonated her to get at me and Damian," Mar'i explained.

"We need to find her," Damian said. "But to do that, we'll need to find Clayface."

"That we can do," Mar'i said.

* * *

In Gotham City that night, Damian was suited up as Robin and driving the Redbird down the city streets. He stopped at a juice bar that served as a hangout for juvenile delinquents that were a little harder, a little meaner, and a little nastier than average. He stormed into the juice bar, drawing the attention of the patrons to him.

"Hey, it's Robin!" someone shouted.

"Hey, little Chickie!" someone else mocked.

Robin threw a Batarang at the mocker, cutting the delinquent's cheek. "Where's Clayface?"

"Why should I tell you?" the mocker asked.

Robin caught the Batarang. "Because if you don't . . . I'll make you."

"Make me?" the mocker asked, standing up to reveal his full height. He was taller and broader than Damian, with a shaved head and a mean face. He brought up his fists, revealing that they had heavy chains wrapped around the knuckles.

"Yes," Robin answered with a cruel sneer.

"C'mon, kick his ass!" somebody shouted.

"Yeah, f#$ him up!" someone else yelled.

"Rip him a new asshole!" a third patron shouted.

"Punk that sissy!" a fourth hollered.

"Smash his pretty little face in!" a fifth howled.

"You heard them," the mocker sneered. "You're going to go down."

"First hit's yours," Robin answered neutrally.

The mocker swung at Robin with his chain-wrapped fists, only for Robin to easily dodge his swings. The mocker continued swinging, only Robin kept dodging his punches with an ease that suggested that the mocker was now the one being mocked. The bruiser's formerly mocking expression was replaced by an enraged countenance, as though he had finally picked up on the joke and it wasn't funny to him at all.

"Stay still, you punk!" the bruiser yelled.

Robin's only answer was to kick him in the solar plexus, the force of the kick plus the steel-toed boot he was wearing knocking the wind out of him. The bruiser collapsed to his knees and then fell prostrate on the floor. Robin glared out at the other patrons.

"Who's next?" The aura of murderous intent Robin exuded compelled everyone else to stay in their seats if they wanted a chance to get through the night without any major injuries. "Oh, no one wants to fight now? I thought you were all dying for a chance to 'smash my pretty little face in.'"

The only thing the taunt accomplished was getting the most foolish and most pride-led patrons to jump out of their seats and come at him. A psychotic smirk formed on Robin's face just before he drew twin Batarangs and threw them at opposite angles. The Batarangs bounced off the walls and other available surfaces before slicing one attacker's shoulder and clipping the hand of another. The others managed to get within striking range . . . only for Robin to contemptuously kick one to the ground and palm strike another in the ribcage. He dropped into a low sweeping kick that knocked another attacker's legs out from under him and spun up to slam his foot into yet another attacker's stomach. As that attacker began to fall, Robin hastened his descent with a scornful shove.

"Now, you're going to tell me what I want to know and what I want to know is . . . where the f#$ is Clayface?" Robin demanded.

The Dark Squire noticed someone trying to slip out through the back. His answer to that was to sprint over to him and grab him by the back of his shirt. "Ah, you might know something."

"I got nothing to say to you, freak!" the hood shouted.

"Really? Will you still have nothing to say if I . . ." Robin trailed off, letting the kris he drew and held to the hood's left eye say it for him.

"Ain't talking, freak!" the hood yelled.

"Too bad." Robin tilted the kris's point closer to the hood's eyeball. The hood's eyelids began to shut reflexively, trying to protect his eyeballs.

"All right, all right! He's using a place just on the edge of the Bowery! It used to be some kind of warehouse!"

"Thank you." Robin smiled sadistically, just before knocking the hood unconscious. He walked out of the juice bar and returned to his Redbird. He slipped inside the driver's seat and started up the car, driving away from the juice bar. As he drove, he tapped into Nightstar's communication frequency. "Robin to Nightstar, I have a fix on Clayface's location. Prepare to meet me there."

"_Sure,_" Nightstar's voice replied. "_Where is he?_"

"An abandoned warehouse off the Bowery," Robin answered.

"_All right,_" Nightstar said. "_I'll meet you there._"

* * *

Robin halted communication and activated the Redbird's "Defender mode." When that happened, the Redbird's chassis morphed from a sleek blood-red sports car into a silvery armored body with a busload of high-tech weapons. As the Redbird morphed, Robin accelerated, ducking and weaving through traffic until he reached the Bowery. Fortunately, the Bowery was more or less empty, mainly because not a lot of people living there owned cars and not a lot of people came to visit. Being Gotham's second most dangerous neighborhood, the impulse to avoid it on the part of the citizenry was quite understandable.

Upon approaching the warehouse, Robin gunned the engines, driving the Redbird straight through the entrance and throwing himself out the driver's door. "Clayface! Did you think I forgot about our play-date?!"

"No . . ." Clayface answered in a deadly tone. "Let me guess, you've come for the girl."

"Yeah," Robin confirmed. "And to kick your ass."

Clayface shifted his hands into spiked maces, while Robin drew six Batarangs and held them between his fingers. "What are you waiting for?" the shape-shifter taunted.

Robin lunged at Clayface, swinging at him with a Batarang-clenching fist. Clayface managed to block, but barely, and even the block didn't stop Robin from slicing into him slightly. Robin flipped back from him and swung at him again, impaling him in the stomach with the Batarangs. Clayface howled in anger and agony as the ultrasonic vibrations the Batarangs were emitting ripped him apart internally. Robin ripped the Batarangs up through Clayface's body and out of him before slicing into him with both Batarang-clenching fists.

Clayface retreated as a pool of liquid clay, but Robin threw the Batarangs at Clayface, impaling him in six different places. The ultrasonic vibrations elicited cries of pain from Clayface, to which Robin was callously deaf. He walked over to Clayface's writhing mass and crouched next to him.

"The pain ends when you tell me where Mickey is," Robin snarled.

"I'm not . . ." Clayface started to say in a vain attempt at defiance when Robin pulled out a seventh Batarang and stabbed his mass with it. This Batarang discharged electricity into Clayface's malleable body, making his pain even worse.

"You're going to tell me," Robin hissed.

"You . . ." Clayface snarled.

"Tell me," Robin repeated threateningly.

Clayface shifted part of his mass into an arm and pointed it at a corner room of the warehouse. "Thanks," Robin sneered and walked toward that room. As Robin walked, Clayface pulled himself off the Batarangs that were tormenting him and re-formed himself. He extended his mass as a multitude of prehensile, sharpened tentacles with one murderous purpose. A flash of purple light later, Clayface was a smear on the floor and the walls. Robin hardly regarded either and broke the door open, revealing the real Mickey, bound and gagged . . . and attached to a miniature detonator.

"Well, doesn't that just beat all?" Robin murmured to himself. He turned around. "Nightstar. She's rigged to a bomb. Doesn't have a timer on it, so it's got to have a remote trigger."

Nightstar had joined Robin and Mickey, removing the gag from Mickey. "You all right?"

"Y-yeah," Mickey replied, a little shaken up but otherwise seemingly no worse for wear.

Robin pulled out a kris and began slicing the ropes that bound Mickey. Just then, he heard a sickening beep, prompting him to turn and see that the bomb had been triggered and was going to explode in ten seconds. With lightning reflexes, Nightstar grabbed the bomb and ripped it off Mickey. She threw herself out of the room and curled up in the fetal position around the bomb, hoping to suffocate the explosion with her body.

"What is she . . . ?" Mickey started to say, only to be cut off by the muffled explosion.

"Doing what she does best," Robin replied. "Protect people."

Nightstar uncurled, revealing that aside from her thighs being coated in explosive dust and soot, she was no worse for wear. However, she did spit out some blood as she walked toward Robin and Mickey, the former of whom was cutting the ropes binding the latter. "You guys ok?"

"Yeah," Mickey replied, slightly more steadily.

"Good to know," Nightstar said with a smile. "Now how about we get you back home? I bet your parents are worried."

"Yeah," Mickey admitted. "They're gonna be _so_ mad."

"I'm sure once we explain what happened, they'll be more understanding," Nightstar suggested.

"I hope so." Mickey looked around. "Wait, where did Robin go? I wanted to thank him."

Nightstar looked around, seeing that neither Robin nor the Redbird were anywhere to be found. "Huh. That's Robin for you. He doesn't like to socialize much."

"Reminds me of Damian," Mickey remarked.

Nightstar smiled secretly. _If only she knew . . ._ Out loud, "Let's get you back home."

* * *

Somewhere in the city, Savitrix perched on a rooftop, smirking. "They'll come."

"Who will? West's brats? They're as good as dead," Inertia sneered.

"No." Savitrix chuckled darkly. "I feel them. I can sense their energy. It's stronger than it's ever been."

"Maybe they can put up a decent fight now. Doesn't matter; they're still gonna die."

Just then, Savitrix heard Deathstroke's voice in her ear. "_Savitrix, return. Bring Inertia._"

"Yes," Savitrix whispered. She turned to Inertia. "Deathstroke wants us."

Inertia looked at Savitrix with a repulsed expression. "I just bet he does."

The two dark speedsters ran down the skyscraper and sped to where Deathstroke had them headquartered. When they stopped, Inertia glared at the masked man. "What do you want?"

"Thaddeus Thawne," Deathstroke greeted tersely. "Lije. You had the opportunity to kill them. Why didn't you?"

"It would have been a meaningless victory," Savitrix replied. "Weak opponents do not deserve to die in battle."

"Besides, it was more fun to drop them off at West's place of employment," Inertia added with a cruel sneer.

"Psychological warfare does have its place," Deathstroke admitted with a hint of black mirth in his tone. "Knowing your opponent's techniques and strategies is worth three quarters as much as knowing your opponent's _soul,_ knowing the way he thinks and believes and _feels._"

"What about your precious Executrix?" Inertia asked mockingly. "She didn't kill her targets, either."

"I've already disciplined her for that," Deathstroke answered cryptically. He turned to Lyta and Ultrawoman. "However, it doesn't matter much to me if you kill them the first time or not. The first time is to prove that they're not untouchable or unbeatable, and you two have done a good job of that already. The second time is the time to drive the knife into them. As for you . . ." He eyed Oni and Quincy. "Was Canary's girl too much for you?"

"Apparently, yes," Quincy admitted sardonically.

Deathstroke chuckled. "I'm not surprised. Ordinary men aren't up to the challenge that a Black Canary presents. No, it takes a _special_ kind of person to fight a Black Canary."

"What are you saying?" Quincy asked.

"What I'm saying, Quincy, is that it's time I stepped into the game," Deathstroke replied.

"_No,_" Oni snarled. "She's mine."

No sooner had the word "mine" escaped his lips that Oni found a broadsword pointed very close to his throat. "Remember, _I_ hired _you,_ not the other way around." He directed his next comment to all of the Reverse-Titans. "_All_ of you would be best served remembering that fact of life."

Oni bristled internally, but for the sake of the League of Assassins' alliance with the man did not make his anger any more obvious than he already had. However, that didn't mean he couldn't make the man pay in full for this perceived insult once their arrangement was over, and pay he would. On his mother's honor, he would make sure Deathstroke the Terminator paid.

* * *

End Notes: Tension within the ranks, of course, but why is Deathstroke after the new Titans? And what will it mean for them when he enters the fight? For the answers to those questions and others, look for the next chapter, and thank you for reading this one.


	9. There Will Be Blood

"Titans: Legacies"

Chapter 7: "There Will Be Blood"

Disclaimer: Teen Titans and the larger universe it inhabits belong to DC Comics and Time Warner, not me. I make no monetary profit from this story whatsoever, just grim satisfaction that someone is reading this.

Author's note: And now we careen toward the new Titans' confrontation with Deathstroke and their rematches with their villainous opponents the Reverse-Titans. How will they fare this time around . . . and are any of them ready to take on the world's deadliest assassin? For the answers to those questions and others, read on.

* * *

In a battered cityscape, Red Hood fired an electrical arrow at Deathstroke, only for Deathstroke to dodge with lightning-like speed. Before she knew it, the assassin was on her, only for Black Canary to block his sword with her gloved hands. She swung her leg up into a brutal kick between his legs, only to impact stainless steel instead of something much more sensitive and vulnerable. Deathstroke withdrew his sword from between her hands and slashed her, only for Red Hood to fire another arrow at him as a distraction. Unfortunately, Deathstroke caught the arrow at the same time he kicked Black Canary aside.

Batarangs and R-shaped shuriken flew at Deathstroke, who blocked them all through swift, mocking movements with his sword. Of course, the Batarangs and R-shuriken were meant to distract the assassin, and they very well might have if he were any less skilled. Thus, when Robin entered the fray armed with his kris, Deathstroke effortlessly parried it with his own combat knife. Robin twisted into a kick, only for Deathstroke to block and wrap his fingers around Robin's ankle. Robin twisted again, this time for a punch, only for Deathstroke to block that as well. Robin twisted a third time, aiming to kick Deathstroke's seemingly unprotected head, only for Deathstroke to tilt his head backwards and thus easily evade Robin's kick. Growing bored, Deathstroke took advantage of the seemingly helpless condition Robin was in and slammed him onto the ground.

At that moment, Deathstroke whirled to catch the ankle of Nightstar, who had launched herself into a diving kick, and use her momentum to toss her away. Nightstar landed gracefully on the ground and sent a discharge of purple starbolt energy through said ground toward Deathstroke, only for Deathstroke to leap into the air to evade. While in midair, Deathstroke launched himself toward Nightstar, only for Nightstar to look up and fire a concentrated starbolt at him. Unsurprisingly, Deathstroke drew his sword and deflected the bolt . . . toward Red Hood.

Red Hood evaded and returned fire with a restraint arrow, only for Deathstroke to dodge and draw his rifle. Just before he could fire, Nightstar kicked the rifle out of his hand and followed up with a vicious punch that momentarily felled Deathstroke, who got up again and dusted himself off. A dark chuckle issued from beneath his mask.

"Not bad," he complimented. "You truly are your mother's daughter."

Nightstar snarled. "Don't talk about my mother, murderer." She fired another concentrated starbolt at Deathstroke, who rolled to the side and sprang up on her side with a brutal thrust of the heel of his palm. Nightstar blocked his thrust and slammed her palm into his chest, knocking him back.

At that moment, a speeding Excel and Impulse double-teamed Deathstroke. A vague trail of spatial distortion followed Excel, while golden light seemed to mark Impulse's path. As fast as Deathstroke could react, Excel and Impulse proved to be even faster than he could keep up with. Just as Excel was about to throw the knockout punch, Deathstroke flashed his combat knife and threw it at her. The split second of distraction that Excel took to dodge allowed Deathstroke to kick Excel in the stomach and punch a retaliating Impulse.

Psychic vectors slashed at Deathstroke, who blocked their attacks with his sword. "If you want to play long-range attacks . . . so can I."

Deathstroke fired his rifle at the center of the psychic vectors, only for the vectors to block his bullets. Unfortunately, the bullets exploded against the vectors, creating gunpowder smoke to seemingly obscure their user's vision. The user, one Tsunami, shook his head in what had to be a pitying gesture. Deathstroke obviously didn't know a little smoke wouldn't do much against his vision.

When a grenade came at Tsunami, he grabbed it with a vector and used said vector to suffocate the detonation. He then extended that vector toward Deathstroke, who jumped into the air to evade it. Undeterred, Tsunami extended more vectors with which to attack Deathstroke, who contorted and flipped about trying to evade the vectors. Finally, one of the vectors grabbed Deathstroke by his legs and Tsunami used it to slam Deathstroke into the ground. The mercenary lay still, unmoving, almost dead.

"Whoa," Impulse breathed out. "You did a number on him."

"He's not dead," Tsunami muttered.

Deathstroke sprang to his feet and threw another grenade at Tsunami, who caught it with a vector. He wrapped the vector around the grenade to suffocate the explosion, but light could not be suffocated so easily, especially since the vector was translucent. As a result, anyone who saw the explosion of light went temporarily blind, including Tsunami. Just as Deathstroke was about to take advantage of the Titans' temporary blindness to strike them down, a blast of heat from above forced him to dodge.

Hovering above them all was Superboy, who glared down at Deathstroke. "Stay away from my friends."

Deathstroke looked up and saw Superboy, his eyes glowing with restrained power. "You think you can take me?"

"I could kill you with one blow," Superboy retorted, placing his feet on the ground. "With one hit, I could cave in your ribcage and turn every vital organ in it into so much useless goop. Try healing from that."

"Come on . . . boy," Deathstroke taunted.

Superboy closed in on Deathstroke for a blow, only for Deathstroke to dodge and cut him with a Kryptonite knife. Superboy rolled aside and fired another blast of heat vision at Deathstroke, who dodged and came up behind Superboy to stab him with the knife. Superboy attempted to block the knife attack, but Deathstroke stabbed him in the hand with the Kryptonite knife. Superboy hissed in pain, starting to weaken because of the Kryptonite in his hand.

Red Hood and Black Canary fired explosive arrows and crossbow bolts at Deathstroke, who dodged both their assaults and came down with his sword to attack them. Black Canary blocked with her own sword, extended from Excalibur's techno-organic material. Deathstroke pushed against her sword, testing her limits. Black Canary held fast, not giving Deathstroke an inch and even pushing back against him.

Deathstroke suddenly drew his combat knife and lunged at Black Canary with it, distracting her long enough for him to kick her legs out from under her. Black Canary caught herself on one hand and spun on it in a series of rapid-fire kicks, which Deathstroke blocked with his forearm. Finally, the newest Blonde Bombshell sprang off her hand, somersaulted backward, and uncurled to kick Deathstroke in the chest. Deathstroke skidded back, but quickly recovered and went on the offensive.

At that moment, Red Hood, Robin, and Nightstar joined Black Canary in her assault on Deathstroke. It was now a four-on-one fight, but Deathstroke didn't seem to mind very much. Deathstroke combated Robin, their respective knives going up against each other. As the two fought, Deathstroke seemed to have no problem using his free hand and legs to deflect the three girls' attacks and retaliate with attacks of his own. Finally, he felled all four of his opponents with one viciously precise blow for each of them. That didn't exactly stop them from getting up to challenge him again.

"End simulation," Nightstar ordered, and the battered cityscape vanished, along with Deathstroke, revealing cave walls.

* * *

"That was sick," Impulse said, "and not in the good way."

"Prepare for more of it," Nightstar replied. "If we're going to go up against Deathstroke, we have to be ready." She looked at Excel and Impulse. "You two are getting good with your new powers."

"Thanks," Excel said, "it's only been a week since we got them."

"We're improving," Nightstar remarked. "We managed to stalemate him this time."

"We can only learn so much from a computer program," Robin cut in acerbically. "Granted, a computer program designed to mimic him, but still a computer program. The _real_ Slade will probably be much tougher to get any kind of edge over."

"What makes you say that?" Impulse asked.

"He's a master strategist," Robin answered. "That's why he's lived this long, aside from our parents letting him live, soft f#& that they were."

"Hey," Red Hood snapped in protest.

"The point I am trying to make," Robin continued on, deliberately ignoring Red Hood, "is that Deathstroke thinks at least ten steps ahead in every battle he engages in. What _we_ have to do is think _fifteen_ steps ahead."

"Outthink the assassin most famous for outthinking," Black Canary remarked. "I like that idea."

Nightstar smiled. "Brilliant."

* * *

Later that night, Nightstar busied herself watching footage of Deathstroke in action over the years. The footage ranged from his beginnings as a simple mercenary to his days in the employ of the H.I.V.E. Seeing her father's "new Titans" battling Deathstroke tempted her sense of nostalgia, particularly when she saw Starfire among that iteration of Titans. Fighting past it, she examined the footage of the mercenary's conflicts with the Titans and other superheroes through the years. She saw how he had bested the original Batman, his repeated fights with her father in his days as Nightwing, his encounters with Cassandra Cain, his battles alongside and against Dinah Lance the second Black Canary . . .

It was almost endless, but Nightstar got something useful out of it. The more she watched Slade Wilson fight, the more insight she gained into what sort of man he was and what sort of fighter he was. There seemed to be a certain kind of moral devolution over the years, with Deathstroke appearing to become much crueler and more vicious as time passed. If what he'd done to Dinah wasn't proof of that, Nightstar hardly knew what was . . . but seeing his viciousness toward her father and Cass during the battle between his first "Reverse-Titans" and two generations of heroic Titans cinched it for her.

Deathstroke was a demon in a human-shaped wrapper.

"Mar'i," Robin's voice interrupted, "you've been there for a long time. You should rest."

"I can't," Nightstar replied. "Not with that monster out there."

Robin looked at the screen. "What have you found out about him?"

"Mostly things I already knew about him, but I looked a little bit into his background and . . . he had a friend, Major William Randolph Wintergreen. They were more than just friends; they were practically hetero life partners. Then he died, and I think that's when Slade really turned into an evil son of a bitch."

Robin paused. "Without Wintergreen, he might have lost whatever grip on sanity and morality he had, considering the long-term psychological effects the serum would have had on him."

Nightstar looked up at Robin. "It doesn't matter. Whatever he used to be, he isn't anymore. He went beyond forgiveness a long time ago."

Robin paused to reflect on what Nightstar had said about Slade's past. If he really thought about it, he and Deathstroke weren't so different after all. They were both cursed monsters, held in check only by the unconditional love – platonic or otherwise – of people far nobler than they. The difference was that Deathstroke had lost his balance . . . and Robin hadn't. It chilled him, to think of a world without Nightstar in it; something in him would die for good if she did.

But she was right. Whatever spark of goodness Deathstroke might have possessed had been snuffed out long ago. Now there was just a monster wearing his skin and armor, a monster that had exploited his own daughter and then retaliated against the man that had freed her by destroying his city. Such a creature did not deserve to live, and Robin would see to it that he was brought down.

"Get some rest," Robin whispered, before disappearing into the shadows of the T-Cave.

* * *

Meanwhile, Red Hood patrolled the city on her motorcycle, her onboard computer tapping into the police scanner to check out any trouble spots. Beneath her helmet, her eyes lit up with excitement when she heard the computer report, _"Stolen navy blue Toyota Highlander, license plate SM5-46D, headed for the intersection of 5__th__ and Ness. All available units, intercept."_ She performed a tight U-turn on the road and sped down toward the intersection of 5th and Ness.

It didn't take too long before, with the optical enhancements in her helmet, she spotted a navy blue Toyota Highlander speeding toward her. Of course, she also heard the sirens of the police units behind that SUV, so it was pretty obvious that this was the car spoken of by the police scanner. She pressed a button on the handlebar of her motorcycle and a section of the chassis opened to reveal a gun turret. Pressing another button, she fired an electromagnetic pulse beam at the Highlander, forcing it to a halt.

The Red Hood smiled in satisfaction as she passed the police, jauntily waving to them while they closed in on the car thief. She rode through the streets, continuing her patrol, at least until she spotted an arrow closing in on her. Immediately, she jumped off her motorcycle, letting it skid down the street as she barely evaded the arrow. "What the f#&?"

"Hello, Red Hood," a cold voice greeted her.

Red Hood turned in the direction of the voice, spotting a pale young man in stylized black archer gear. "Who are you?"

"Quincy," the dark archer replied.

"Let me guess, you're one of Deathstroke's Reverse-Titans."

"It's an alliance of convenience, really." Quincy prepared another arrow, Red Hood doing the same. They stood there for what seemed like an eternity, facing off against each other. Finally, both of them fired their arrows at each other, Quincy's arrow striking Red Hood in the arm and Red Hood's arrow embedding itself in Quincy's leg. The impact of the arrows staggered both of them, Red Hood fighting past the pain to pull Quincy's arrow out of her arm. Quincy pulled Red Hood's arrow out of his leg and tossed it aside.

"You're good," Red Hood complimented with a smirk, tossing off her helmet and replacing it with her standard red-tinted sunglasses.

"So are you," Quincy answered.

"But . . ." Red Hood's tone darkened. "I'm better."

"I could say the same of myself. Guess we'll have to find out who's telling the truth and who's just posturing."

Both archers prepared their arrows and fired again. This time, Red Hood lunged out of the way of Quincy's arrow, while Quincy evaded Red Hood's arrow. Quincy was quick to prepare another arrow, only to have to dodge a crossbow bolt fired by Red Hood. He fired off his arrow at Red Hood, who bent backwards to evade it and returned fire with her crossbow. Quincy drew a pistol from his thigh and another from behind him, pointing both at Red Hood and firing.

Red Hood dodged and changed her crossbow's setting to "rapid fire." She quickly shot off several bolts at Quincy, who flipped out of the way and opened fire on her while still in midair. Red Hood evaded Quincy's bullets, her sunglasses' optical enhancements enabling her to measure the speed and perceive the paths of those bullets. She reloaded her crossbow and resumed firing at Quincy, both she and he acrobatically dodging each other's fire.

Finally, Quincy stopped, but only to reload. Once reloaded, he pointed both guns at Red Hood and smirked. "I'm not here to kill you. Not right now, anyway. I'm just a messenger."

"What's the message?" Red Hood asked.

"Return to Titans Lair tomorrow at midnight," Quincy stated coldly.

"Is that where Deathstroke wants to kill us?"

"Fitting, isn't it? Titans Lair was where the Titans were born and Titans Lair will be where they are buried."

"You sorry piece of s#!" Red Hood lost her temper and prepared another arrow, only to be shot in the arm. As the bullet was an armor piercer, it penetrated the weave of her sleeve and embedded itself near the bone of her arm. Despite the pain in her arm, Red Hood grabbed her bow and arrow and prepared to fire.

"Fortunately for you, I appreciate hot-blooded vixens like you," Quincy remarked sadistically. "That was just a warning. Try that again, and I'll aim somewhere more vital."

Red Hood snickered. "Look at you, trying to be all threatening."

Quincy smirked. "Look at you, trying to pretend you're not injured." He holstered his guns and turned to walk away. "Until next time, Miss Harper."

Red Hood collapsed her bow and hooked it to her costume, walking toward her fallen motorcycle. Once close enough, she righted it and switched her sunglasses for her helmet. She revved up her motorcycle and began to ride back to her home, despite the pain in her arms rendering every turning motion agony. However, the pain wasn't the only thing on her mind; hell, it was the last thing on her mind.

For one thing, she was worried about how her dad would react to seeing her come home with an arrow wound and a bullet wound. Granted, he knew she could handle herself, but he didn't always act like he knew; hyper-protective as he'd gotten since . . . Red Hood cut off that train of thought immediately, she was not in the mood to revisit that incident. For another, she was more worried about what Deathstroke and his Reverse-Titans would do to her and her friends. For a third, choosing the original Titans' base as the place of their downfall . . . Deathstroke was a very sick bastard, indeed.

* * *

When Red Hood got back to her place, she used the secret access that served more the purpose of privacy than actually keeping her identity secret. By this point, the pain in her arms had faded into a kind of numbness, which could mean only one thing: She was going into shock. She quickly found and opened the medical kit, fighting the numbness that was no longer just in her arms but beginning to spread through her entire body. She unlatched the top half of her armor and rubbed antiseptic on the wounds in her arms, cleaning them to prevent infection from setting in.

"Gonna have to cut myself open," she murmured. "F#& me . . ."

She pulled out a pair of tweezers designed specifically for removing bullets and inserted them into her bullet wound. She gritted her teeth and widened the tweezers to grasp the bullet inside her. She fought the urge to shudder when she found out how close to her bone the bullet was, pulling the bullet out. Immediately, blood flowed freely from the wound, the bullet having acted as a stopgap. She quickly cleaned the wound and then bound it tightly in gauze bandages to stop the bleeding. Once that was taken care of, she wrapped the arrow wound in those same bandages.

With her wounds taken care of, Red Hood stripped off the bottom half of her armor and changed into a shoulder-less red top and black jeans. She went upstairs into the house proper and collapsed on the living room couch. "Now for some mindless entertainment . . ."

Lian Harper picked up the remote and turned on the television. She flitted through action drama, crime drama, sitcom, reality TV, adult drama, teen drama, comedy-drama, supernatural drama, sci-fi drama . . . "F#& hell, 500 channels and nothing but s# on every one."

Then she paused, seeing a young woman in a crimson burlesque outfit straddling a bound young man. Lian smirked. "I knew those premium channels were good for something."

And that was what Roy Harper transported in on, his teenage daughter watching soft-core. Overcoming his initial shock, he spoke up. "I'm home."

"Hey, Dad," Lian greeted. "How was it?"

"Not too bad," Roy replied. "Prevented a few disasters, stomped on a few super-villains, the usual. You? How've you been doing?"

"We used the combat simulator to rehearse a fight against Deathstroke," Lian replied. "It was rough." She turned her head and peered up at her father. "Dad? You and Deathstroke were both part of Checkmate once. What was he like?"

"Why do you want to know that?" Roy asked.

Lian paused, but only briefly. "We have to fight him, tomorrow at midnight, at Titans Lair."

Roy's eyes widened in shock before narrowing in deep, barely restrained anger. The idea that Deathstroke would desecrate the place where he and four of his closest friends cemented their relationship by trying to kill his child and her friends there outraged the master archer like nothing else ever had managed. When he came back to reality, he noticed Lian looking at him searchingly and unclenched his fists, seeing ruby crescents where his nails had dug into the flesh of his palms.

"Deathstroke . . . what can I say about him?" Roy asked rhetorically, affecting a lightness he didn't really feel. His tone quickly darkened as he continued to speak. "He was a bad guy, plain and simple. Killing for a living works like that, even if you think the people you're accepting contracts on are scum. And you know what really stings? The man had kids! And he either got them killed or psychologically wrecked because he couldn't give up the thrill of combat."

Roy quickly crossed over onto the couch, sitting next to Lian. "_Etai yazi,_ I want you to promise me something."

"What is it, Dad?"

"I don't want you fighting Deathstroke, but I can't fight your battles for you. I wish I could, I wish with everything I am that I could, but . . . you're old enough to stand on your own two feet. Just promise me you're not going to die fighting him."

Lian looked into her father's eyes and she saw that he was on the verge of tears. "Daddy . . ." she whispered, and hugged him tightly. "I promise."

* * *

The next afternoon, after school, the eight young heroes met in Titans Cave. The knowledge that they were going to fight Deathstroke's team had been hanging over all their heads the entire day, like Damocles Swords. Even Impulse didn't seem to be his usual high-spirited self. Robin was still exuding cold contempt for everything that so much as breathed in his presence, but there was a slight chink in that emotional armor, detectable only to Nightstar.

"There it is," Nightstar said, pulling up a digital blueprint of Titans Lair on the computer. "Where the Titans were born and where they might die."

"We're not going to die," Robin spat coldly. "_They_ are."

"Oh, no, you don't, psycho bird!" Red Hood cut in. "None of us, you especially, are killing anyone."

"Do we have any kind of plan?" Excel asked.

Nightstar looked at the blueprint of Titans Lair, examining the various points at which one could access the original Titans' headquarters. "I want you guys, from now until it's time to fight Deathstroke and his team, to memorize this. With the exceptions of Inertia and Clayface, Deathstroke's team is composed of unknown players . . . except for the fact that they can outfight us. That may be true, but we have to be ready for them. Otherwise, we're dead."

Black Canary looked at the computer screen, committing the blueprint to memory. Red Hood used her sunglass camera to record the blueprint into the minicomputer's memory. Robin committed the blueprint, especially the highlighted access points, to memory. Superboy applied his own phenomenal mind to memorizing the blueprint, while Excel and Impulse used their powers to take subjectively longer to study the blueprint. Tsunami studied the blueprint in silence, although his eyes darted toward Red Hood from time to time.

"What do we do now?" Superboy asked.

"We go to our families," Nightstar replied. "We go to the people that love us, that we love, and we have one more dinner with them."

"Sounds like a plan," Tsunami said softly.

"Yeah," Impulse agreed, in unusually somber tones for him.

* * *

That night, a costumed Damian Wayne picked up his sheathed jian and strapped it to his hip. He did not have any regrets, anything he wished he had done or hadn't done. He'd done more in his seventeen years than most people would do in a full lifetime. If he could be bothered to list any regrets, he would have exactly one: never telling _her_ the truth about how he saw their relationship, about what he really wanted from her.

Then he put on his mask, and Damian Wayne and his singular regret were no more. The Dark Squire was in the driver's seat now, and he had no time for regrets. He walked to the Redbird and slid into the driver's seat, starting the car and driving out of the Batcave. As he drove, he activated the Redbird's "armored mode."

Above him, a costumed Mar'i Grayson glided through the air. Beside him, a costumed Lian Harper and Olivia Queen rode on their motorcycles. Twin blurs sped past them, visible to Olivia's augmented eyes as Iris and Jai West. Also above him, Chris Kent flew, proudly bearing the crest of the House of El into the upcoming battle.

All seven youths stopped at Titans Lair, only to find Tsunami there. "Wow, you must have really wanted to get here," Red Hood remarked with sardonic affection.

Robin drew his sword and sliced through Tsunami, only for Tsunami's surprisingly malleable form to quickly revert to its shape. "Clayface."

"No fooling you, is there, Robin?" Clayface taunted cruelly as he shifted back to his true form.

"Where's the real Tsunami?" Red Hood asked angrily, preparing an explosive arrow.

"I haven't seen him," Clayface replied, "but I'm gonna greet him with your corpse when he shows!" The amorphous shape-shifter extended his arms as battering rams, only for Red Hood to jump out of the way and fire the explosive arrow. The arrow embedded itself in Clayface's midsection and detonated, splattering the shape-shifter all over the ground.

Just then, twin blurs assaulted the Titans, taking down Robin and Red Hood before they could even blink. Black Canary dodged and attempted to fight back, only to be struck down as well. Excel and Impulse accelerated to block the assaulting blurs, their speed enabling them to perceive their attackers clearly: Inertia and Savitrix.

Savitrix chuckled with dark amusement when she saw Excel. "You finally have a prayer of keeping up with me."

"Gonna do a lot more than keep up with you," Excel retorted.

"You may stop now," a voice reeking of cold menace spoke.

Inertia smacked Impulse to the ground and glared in the direction of the voice. The Titans assembled to peer into the darkness, seeing Deathstroke standing in front of the cave entrance with a re-formed Clayface at his side, along with Savitrix, Ultrawoman, Oni, Quincy, Executrix, and Lyta. Inertia snarled and sped to Savitrix's side, his anger at not being able to finish off the living incarnations of the legacy he opposed.

"Deathstroke," Nightstar greeted frostily.

"Nightstar," Deathstroke greeted in almost relaxed tones. "I've been looking forward to this for a long time."

* * *

End Notes: There you have it; we are set for the confrontation between the heroic Titans and the Reverse-Titans. Who will remain standing? Who will fall? What secrets will be revealed in the midst of it all? For the answers to those questions and others, look for the next chapter and thanks for reading this one.


	10. Down with the Nightmare

"Titans: Legacies"

Chapter 8: "Down with the Nightmare"

Disclaimer: Teen Titans and the larger universe it inhabits belong to DC Comics and Time Warner, not me. If I own anything at all, it's the characters of Ultrawoman, Quincy, Savitrix, and Executrix. Also, I make no profit from this story aside from grim satisfaction that someone is reading this.

Author's note: And now . . . the showdown you've been waiting for. The throwdown between the new Titans and the Reverse-Titans, not to mention the first time the new Titans will fight Deathstroke the Terminator. Will these neophyte heroes triumph over the scourge of the Titans legacy, or will they fall before his might? For the answer to that question, as well as the question of just why the hell Deathstroke wants them dead, read on.

* * *

Red Hood and Black Canary drew loaded crossbows, pointing them at Quincy and Oni, who aimed their arrows at the two girls. Nightstar's hands smoked with building power, while Robin drew his jian. Superboy, Excel, and Impulse stood in fighting poses, anticipating an attack from their opponents. A trans-portal opened and Tsunami stepped out with a grim expression on his face.

"Sorry I'm late. Mother was keeping me."

"Isn't that sweet?" Deathstroke mocked. "You have a mother that wants to protect you. Good for her. I'll send her your corpse."

Ultrawoman smirked cruelly when she saw Superboy. "Back to being the good little Super-p#&? Too bad. I liked you better when you were being bad."

"Things have changed," Superboy answered. "Not that I'd expect you to understand."

"What's the point of all this?" Nightstar asked. "What do you want with us?"

"Simply put, I want you dead," Deathstroke responded curtly. "I want your parents to suffer as _I_ have suffered."

Nightstar barked out a harsh laugh. "You brought all that on yourself."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand," Deathstroke replied. "But that's all right. I only expect you to die."

"The only one who's going to die is _you!_" Robin roared, lunging at Deathstroke with his jian extended. Deathstroke drew his broadsword and blocked Robin's jian.

"Vicious little boy, aren't you?"

"It's how you survive in this world. You know that already."

"Titans Together!" Nightstar shouted.

The battle was joined.

Red Hood and Black Canary fought the assassin archers, dodging their arrows and retaliating with crossbow bolts. Tsunami fought Lyta, psychic vectors clashing with mystical lightning. Superboy and Ultrawoman traded blows in midair. Nightstar fought Executrix and Clayface, while the speedsters of both teams went up against each other. Robin continued to battle Deathstroke, albeit a one-sided battle.

"You're good . . ." Deathstroke admitted. "But I'm better. It's not your fault, really; I've just lived a lot longer than you have."

"Doesn't matter how long you've lived," Robin snarled, as he barely parried another slash from Deathstroke's sword. "I'm still going to kill you."

"Really? Is your precious Nightstar really going to allow you to do that?"

"You shut the f#& up about her." He swung at Deathstroke, only for Deathstroke to easily block his sword and force him to the ground.

"Ah. I wonder if she knows how you feel for her. How many nights have you awoken in a cold sweat, with the only conscious thought on your mind being her?"

Robin snarled and rose to his feet, slashing at Deathstroke, who mockingly parried his sword before slamming his elbow into his stomach. Pressing his advantage, Deathstroke slammed his elbow into Robin's back, knocking him to the ground.

"For the record, Grayson lasted longer than you."

Robin pulled several three-pointed shuriken out of his utility belt and threw them at Deathstroke, who evaded with lightning reflexes. He slashed at Robin, who barely rolled out of the way and retaliated with a slash of his sword. Deathstroke blocked Robin's slash and kicked him in the ribcage, knocking him down. Robin rolled to his feet and threw explosive Batarangs at Deathstroke, who caught them all and threw them back at him. Robin tried to dodge, but the explosions came close enough to knock him around a tad. Fortunately, his armor cushioned him from the worst of the impact and he was quickly ready to fight again.

"You really expect to be able to kill me, performing like that?" Deathstroke taunted.

A feral smile crossed Robin's face. "Absolutely." He lunged at Deathstroke with his sword extended, only for Deathstroke to parry his attack. This time, Robin pulled three R-shuriken out of his belt and threw them at Deathstroke's face, aiming for the black side of his mask. The mercenary tilted his head to evade and catch the shuriken, but Robin lunged into his blind side and slashed him.

"Excellent use of misdirection," Deathstroke hissed, just before kicking Robin in the stomach.

Meanwhile, Clayface extended his arms toward Nightstar as battering rams, only for Nightstar to slice them off with starbolt-enhanced chops. Executrix flipped over Clayface and came down with her katana for a slash, which Nightstar blocked with one of her bracers, kicking Executrix in the stomach. Executrix fell back into Clayface, only for Clayface to bounce her off him, allowing her to spring into a flying kick, which Nightstar blocked. Executrix went into a handstand that turned into a backward flip that put her back on her feet.

"Who are you?" Nightstar asked her.

"You don't need to know," Executrix replied. "No one needs to know." She sprinted into a sword attack on Nightstar, who blocked her slashes with her bracers. Upon one block, Nightstar used her free hand to shoot a starbolt at Executrix, whose armor absorbed enough of the damage to let her live, only she still ended up flying off her feet. Executrix twisted in midair and landed on her feet, slashing at Nightstar again.

Nightstar avoided Executrix's slashes and flipped over her, twirling in midair for a roundhouse kick to the back of her head. Unfortunately for her, Executrix whirled and caught her ankle, spinning her into a hard throw that sent her crashing near the entrance of Titans Lair. Nightstar rose to her feet and fired a starbolt at Executrix, who evaded and launched herself into the air for a flying kick. Nightstar blocked the kick by raising her bracer, but Executrix flipped over her head and whirled into a kick that Nightstar blocked. Nightstar followed up with a starbolt-enhanced palm strike to Executrix's stomach, sending her flying.

Executrix rose to her feet with a smoking hole burned into the outer layer of her uniform, just in time for Clayface to envelop Nightstar. Executrix stalked toward Clayface with her katana at her side, her body language reeking of murderous intent. Just before she could confront the amorphous shape-shifter, said shape-shifter burst apart in an explosion of purple light, heat, and force, knocking Executrix off her feet. When she got up, she saw a somewhat muddy Nightstar glaring furiously at her.

"Come," Executrix challenged.

* * *

Red Hood and Black Canary fired exploding bolts at Quincy and Oni, who dodged their assaults and retaliated with their arrows. Black Canary caught their arrows with inhuman speed while Red Hood dodged and returned fire. Quincy fired an explosive arrow at Red Hood, who dodged just in time for the explosion to knock her to her side. Never one to waste time, she rolled onto her back, drew her bow, and prepared and fired a restraint arrow at Quincy.

Oni fired an arrow at Black Canary, who caught it and tossed it aside, running toward him. Oni fired more arrows, but Black Canary dodged or caught them all until she was close enough, at which point she dived into a roll and sprang up with an uppercut to Oni's chin. Oni fell to the ground and didn't get up immediately, but get up he eventually did.

"Sister . . ." he growled dangerously.

"Doesn't matter, 'brother,'" Black Canary answered. "You're trying to destroy my family. I'm not going to let you do that."

Oni recovered his bow and fired another arrow at Black Canary, who rolled to the side to evade. Oni simply followed her movements, fast as they were, and fired at her again. Black Canary caught his arrow and lunged at him with Excalibur's blade extended. Oni blocked the blade with his bow, only for Black Canary to push against him, trying to force him to give way. Oni struggled to remain upright, even though his knees were buckling from the force of Black Canary's sword. Finally, with a burst of desperate strength, he pushed back against her, only she flipped backward and extended her blade to cut the string of his bow.

Oni threw his bow aside and extended the blade hidden in his gauntlet. He lunged at Black Canary, who blocked his blade with her own. She swung her leg up to kick him in the stomach, following up with a slash of her blade. Oni barely managed to block his sister's slash, but she performed a flipping cartwheel over his head and whirled into a roundhouse kick. Oni blocked, but the kick came with such force that it cracked his wrist despite the bracer's protection.

Black Canary twirled into another kick, which clipped Oni in the side of his head. While he was disoriented, Black Canary pressed her advantage with hard and fast punches, only for another arrow to fly in her direction. Without looking at the arrow, she caught it and whirled to face Quincy.

"Want this back?" she taunted and threw it at Quincy, who dodged just before it could explode. The explosion knocked him off-balance, but he quickly drew his guns and began firing at Black Canary, who dodged his bullets with superhuman celerity. She drew her crossbow again and returned fire with exploding bolts, which Quincy dodged.

* * *

Superboy and Ultrawoman traded vicious punches in midair, zipping around each other at super-speed to get into proper position to retaliate and evade. Superboy was using his Phantom Zone projector implants to dimensionally shift out of the way of Ultrawoman's attacks and retaliate faster than even she could see, but that advantage didn't last forever. When he emerged from yet another spatial warp to attack, she whirled with phenomenal speed and punched him.

"How . . . ?"

Ultrawoman smirked. "I can see past dimensional barriers."

Superboy snarled and went into a high-velocity attack on Ultrawoman, augmented by his strength and the spatial shifting technology implanted inside him. Ultrawoman managed to block most of his attacks, but a few still got through her defenses. No matter, it just spurred her to fight harder and more viciously. Finally, she caught him by the wrist when he attempted to punch her again, only for a sunstone spike to emerge from his wrist and pierce her palm. Ultrawoman kicked Superboy off her at the same time she was pulling her hand off his spike, said hand quickly regenerating.

Just as Superboy was recovering from the attack, he was suddenly attacked by a super-speeding Ultrawoman. In fact, she was moving so fast that she seemed to be in several places at once, even to his heightened vision. It was everything he could do just to block her attacks, let alone retaliate.

_What is she?_ Superboy wondered. _How is she moving so fast?_

"It's called quickstep, in case you're wondering," Ultrawoman explained. "It's a special form of hypervelocity combat. Johnny Quick taught me."

"You're not from this world, are you?" Superboy deduced.

"Nope!" Ultrawoman confirmed with a vicious smile. "I'm from a much cooler place!"

"A world where evil rules is _not cool!_" Superboy launched himself into his own version of quickstep, fusing his super-speed with his spatial shifting.

"_Hell, yeah!_" Ultrawoman was psychotically overjoyed. "Come on, baby boy! Hit me with your best shot!"

"_As you wish._"

The battle was on now, with Superboy and Ultrawoman both moving at impossibly superhuman speeds as they attacked and evaded. Ultrawoman launched herself into the air and came down battering Superboy with a vicious pirouette. At the last second, Superboy managed to catch her leg and throw her, but she flipped backwards to control her propulsion and shot herself at Superboy like a bullet. Superboy crossed his arms and projected sunstone spikes out of his forearms to block, but Ultrawoman punched through the spikes and slammed him to the ground.

Superboy used his legs to flip Ultrawoman off him, and she twisted in midair, firing heat vision at him. Superboy shifted between the Phantom Zone and this dimension, rendering himself insubstantial and thus immune to heat vision. When he re-substantiated, he jumped up to catch Ultrawoman's punch and toss her. Of course, she shrugged it off and twisted in midair to attack him again, this time kicking him in the chest. As he flew back, Ultrawoman sped up to him and punched him, propelling him even further.

"You know, you're actually a lot better than I thought you'd be. Wanna shag sometime?"

Superboy was positively appalled. "NO!"

"It's not like you really have a say in the matter. I was just trying to be nice." A cruel smirk marred her otherwise lovely features.

"You, nice?" Superboy's expression betrayed utter disbelief.

"Yeah. I'm capable of it. I just choose not to." She laughed insanely. "Now come on and give me some sugar!"

"Here's your sugar!" Superboy went into a quickstep attack on her, which only amused Ultrawoman.

"That's what I'm talking about!" she cheered madly. "Now it's my turn to give you some!"

Ultrawoman retaliated with her own quickstep, trading blows with Superboy so viciously anyone who saw her would be surprised that she considered it "merely foreplay." Superboy let off a close-range blast of heat vision at Ultrawoman, whose response was to cry out in almost rapturous delight. When the blast petered out, she remained standing, albeit smoking, with a deranged smile on her face just before unleashing her own heat vision attack on Superboy. The blast knocked Superboy for a loop and while he was disoriented, Ultrawoman quickstepped all over him, finishing with a vicious kick that knocked him to the ground.

She gave him no time to recover, grabbing him by his hair and yanking him up for use as a living punching bag. Unfortunately for her, he grabbed her fist and punched her as hard as he had it in him to do, which sent her flying. Superboy flew after her, pursuing her with a series of super-speed punches which she struggled to block.

"You're going to make an excellent boy toy," Ultrawoman remarked cruelly.

"I hate to admit it, but I'm enjoying this fight," Superboy snarled. "You know what it's like, don't you, to live in a world that feels like it's made out of _cardboard_ and _tissue paper._ To feel like you have to constantly be careful of every move you make, or else you could kill someone. Oh, wait. You don't care about those things at all, do you? Dumb fool me, wanting to empathize with a psychopath. But even though you _are_ a psychopath, you're possibly the only one who can make me feel like this . . ."

"How sweet," Ultrawoman purred. "I almost feel like I could fall in love with you, too. Oh, wait. I don't do love."

* * *

Excel and Impulse dashed all over the area surrounding Titans Lair fighting Savitrix and Inertia, trading fast and furious blows. They moved so quickly that they were invisible to the naked eye as anything except blurs of color and light. "So you can keep up now? What happened? Daddy Flash upgrade you?" Inertia taunted.

Impulse's response was to simply disappear into the Speed Force and reemerge with a punch aimed at the back of Inertia's head. Inertia tilted his head to evade and threw himself into a cartwheel-kick that knocked Impulse for a loop. Impulse quickly recovered, but the time he should have been taking was occupied by fending off Inertia's super-speed attacks.

Savitrix anticipated that her kinetic draining field would protect her from Excel's attacks. To her shock, though, Excel's attacks were still getting through with enough force to hurt her. Excel merely smirked in satisfied amusement. "What's wrong? Wondering why I'm whipping your ass?"

Savitrix snarled. "You're not using your own speed . . . you're manipulating the speed of the tachyons around you."

"Exactly!" Excel crowed, accenting it with another punch to Savitrix's jaw. "You'd drain my speed if I used it, so I resorted to manipulating the speed of the time acting directly on my person."

"You . . ." Savitrix hissed and lunged into a quickstep. Excel blocked Savitrix's attacks and retaliated with a quickstep of her own.

"You're not so tough when you can't just suck the speed out of other people, are you?" Excel mocked.

As his older twin continued to fight Savitrix, Impulse continued fighting against the twisted reflection of his predecessor. Inertia dodged as many of Impulse's attacks as he could, but Impulse was coming at him faster and harder than he'd anticipated. The two speedsters darted all over the combat area, attacking, evading, and retaliating at phenomenal velocities.

"You're nothing," Impulse spat.

"I'm nothing?" Inertia retorted. "You're the one who took up the legacy of a stupid dead child!"

"Bart Allen was not a stupid dead child." Impulse punched Inertia. "He was ten times the man you'll ever be." He followed up with a kick. "And if anyone deserved to die, it was you . . . not him." He thrust the heel of his palm into Inertia's jaw in the style of an uppercut.

* * *

Tsunami used his psychic vectors to block Lyta's lightning bolts, but the real trouble came when she began resorting to physical attacks. She flew at him with inhuman speed, slamming her palm into his chest with enough physical and mystical force to burn a hole in his outfit and singe his chest. Tsunami flipped to his feet and shot a vector at Lyta, who dodged and fired another bolt of mystical lightning at him.

Tsunami generated a force blade and slashed at Lyta, who blocked with a lightning blade. She pushed against him, forcing him back until the point he fired a blast of mystical force out of his eyes. The blast knocked Lyta for a loop, allowing Tsunami to slash her with the force blade. However, Lyta grabbed his wrist and soundly tossed him, adding insult to injury by shooting him while he was in midair. He landed on the ground with smoke emanating from his body.

Despite his injury, Tsunami rose to his feet and sped to attack Lyta, who reacted to his assault with blinding quickness. She blocked each and every one of his punches and retaliated with another mystically augmented palm thrust that knocked him to the ground. Tsunami flipped to his feet and shot his vectors at Lyta, who sped forward and struck him in the form of purple lightning.

_How do I fight her?_ Tsunami asked himself.

"You don't," Lyta replied. "You just die."

Tsunami crouched, holding his injured shoulder. "Damn it . . ."

"Now stay still and it won't hurt so much."

"Actually, no."

Tsunami broke the seal on the cursed magic Lyta had poisoned him with. Immediately, he felt the dark energy surge through his body, augmenting his strength. He would pay a price for it later, but right now, he had to survive. He could worry about the long-term effects of the magic later.

In a burst of speed, Tsunami drop-kicked Lyta in her shoulders, the kick coming with such force that it knocked her to the ground. He came down with a fist charged with black-and-purple mystical energy, which she barely rolled out of the way of. Even so, the energy leaked out through the ground and shocked her. When she got up, Tsunami was behind her, prompting her to whirl into a kick that he easily caught. He twisted her into a throw and then shot her in midair with a bolt of tainted mystical energy, mimicking her earlier action against him.

Lyta snarled and rose to her feet, lunging into a quickstep. Tsunami merely sped up to match her, blocking and parrying her attacks with scornful ease. When he attacked, he did so with a brutal palm thrust to her chest, nearly blasting a hole through her. Lyta gasped in shock and outrage.

"You hurt me!" she yelled.

"That's the name of the game," Tsunami answered sadistically. "Now . . . want some more?"

Just as she got up, he sped behind her and grabbed her hands. "Now . . . you're awfully proud of these hands, aren't you? Of the power in them. What you can do to people with them. I wonder . . . how you would feel if you didn't have your hands anymore."

"What are you saying?" Lyta asked indignantly.

With no further warning, Tsunami squeezed Lyta's hands with such force that the bones in them were crushed, prompting a bloodcurdling scream of agony from her. The scream distracted all of the other combatants, drawing their attention to her and Tsunami, who callously tossed her aside.

"My hands . . . my hands . . ." Lyta moaned pitiably.

"What did you do?!" Excel asked.

"Neutralized a threat," Tsunami answered in what was apparently a Terminator impression.

Red Hood looked at Tsunami in horror. "You're using the curse, aren't you?"

A re-formed Clayface attacked Tsunami as a flowing wave of liquid clay, only for Tsunami to unleash a blast of mystical force that coagulated and then froze the shape-shifter. "Who's next?"

* * *

Deathstroke chuckled darkly, having tossed Robin aside after soundly trouncing him and now walking toward Tsunami. The Atlantean mage smirked cruelly at the mercenary, the cursed magic's physical manifestation marring his otherwise handsome features. The crimson stare of bloodlust further marred his face.

"You're an interesting boy," Deathstroke remarked. "I almost wish I didn't have to kill you."

"I think you've gotten it mixed up," Tsunami responded, a grim smirk on his face. "I'm going to kill you."

"Your Robin said that to me . . . and look what I did to him." Deathstroke gestured at the beaten Robin, who was still struggling to his feet.

"Tsk. Robin has always overestimated himself."

"And now, so do you."

"If you're so confident . . . come on."

In a flash of blinding speed, Deathstroke cut Tsunami's throat with his sword. Tsunami clutched his bleeding throat, pulling his hand back to look at his blood. To Deathstroke's surprise, he laughed insanely. "Can you name the one thing you shouldn't have done?"

"And what would that be?" Deathstroke asked.

Tsunami threw the blood into the air, the red fluid glowing bright scarlet and hardening into needles, which he proceeded to shoot at Deathstroke. The mercenary managed to dodge a great deal of those needles, but there were so many of them that even he couldn't evade forever. Fortunately, his armor managed to absorb most of the damage from the blood needles.

"What the f#& is that?!" Impulse asked.

"Blood magic," Robin replied.

"How do you know?" Impulse questioned.

Robin chuckled grimly. "Etrigan."

As Deathstroke dodged the blood needles, Tsunami blitzed him, quickstepping so brutally that even the mercenary couldn't react to it in time. "Let's see you heal from that," Tsunami mocked.

"What happened to him?" Excel asked.

Before anyone could answer, Executrix had attacked Tsunami in a flurry of swift sword strikes, which Tsunami blocked with his hands alone. Finally, he grabbed her blade and used it to pull her in close enough to brutally knee her in the stomach before slamming his elbow into her exposed back. "It's not enough . . ." Tsunami muttered psychotically.

"Come to me, you gruesome son of a bitch!" Ultrawoman challenged.

Tsunami took up her invitation with a brutal uppercut, which she easily took, flipping into the air and landing with a vicious drop-kick to his chest. Tsunami tumbled on the ground before rolling to his feet and firing a blast of mystical force out of his eyes, to which Ultrawoman retaliated with a blast of heat vision. The two blasts collided viciously, pushing against each other until Ultrawoman's heat vision overcame Tsunami's force.

"Bit off more than you could chew, huh, mother#&!?" Ultrawoman taunted.

Tsunami's retort came in the form of a multitude of blood needles, which Ultrawoman either dodged or swatted aside. When Tsunami himself blitzed her, she managed to block by shifting to quickstep. Ultrawoman smirked when she saw the blood leaking from his eyes and nose.

"That magic's ripping you up from the inside, isn't it?" Ultrawoman remarked. "I can see it. Benefits of X-ray vision, you know? And not to mention . . . you're getting slower."

"I still have enough time left to kill you!" Tsunami roared, hitting her bare stomach with a brutal palm thrust augmented by blood magic. Having succeeded in knocking her down, if not necessarily out, Tsunami walked over her and strode toward the other Reverse-Titans with murderous intent literally leaking out of his eyes.

"Cerdian, stop!" Red Hood shouted.

Tsunami briefly paused, just in time for Quincy to shoot him with an armor-piercing explosive arrow. The arrow struck him somewhere between shoulder and arm and detonated, seemingly blasting off both his arm and a good portion of his chest.

"CERDIAN!" Red Hood shouted in horrified anguish.

When the smoke cleared, Tsunami was in a crouch . . . and his chest and arm were regenerating themselves quite rapidly, much to the surprise of everyone who saw him. Once he finished regenerating, he stood up with a psychotic smirk on his face. "Now you've done it . . ." he whispered menacingly.

The next thing Quincy knew, his arm had been twisted into a painful lock by Tsunami, who then used that lock to dislocate his shoulder. Tsunami threw the assassin archer aside, just in time to dodge 28 arrows fired by Oni in the space of one minute. He rushed in for a punch to finish off the other assassin archer, only to be stopped by an invisible hand.

"That's quite enough, Cerdian," a familiar, authoritative voice spoke. "We'll take it from here."

The Titans – heroic and Reverse – and Deathstroke turned in the direction of the voice, shocked by what they saw. Specifically, it was Dick Grayson, Roy Harper, Donna Troy, Garth, Wally West, Rose Wilson, Joey Wilson, Raven, Vic Stone, and Gar Logan. All ten were in costume, and none of them looked too happy at the tableau presented to them.

"Deathstroke," Batman (Dick) snarled.

"Still picking on Titans after all this time," Rose remarked acidly. "Guess you'll never learn."

* * *

End Notes: I bet you weren't expecting that. Don't worry, it's not going to be a regular occurrence, the older Titans coming in to save the younger Titans' asses. I will only save it for special occasions, such as this one. If you want to see what's going to happen after this, you'll have to wait for the next chapter. In the meantime, thanks for reading this one.


	11. Shadow of the Day

"Titans: Legacies"

Chapter 9: "Shadow of the Day"

Disclaimer: Teen Titans and the larger universe it inhabits do not belong to me, but to DC Comics and Time Warner. I make no monetary profit from this story whatsoever.

Author's note: And now, it's the end of the first arc of my next-generation Titans story. The older Titans have arrived to save the day, but how well will they fare against Deathstroke and his Reverse-Titans? Not to mention, how will the new Titans take their arrival, and will the older Titans' presence be enough to turn the tide? For the answers to those questions and others, read on.

* * *

"What are you doing here?" Nightstar asked, startled.

"Let's just say we're here to save your asses and leave it at that," Red Arrow (Roy) answered.

"Besides, it's not like we can let this bastard kill you where we founded the Titans in the first place," the Flash (Wally) added.

"Protecting your legacy," Deathstroke hissed. "That's admirable."

The assassin lunged into a fast attack on Batman, only for Nightstar to dart in front of him and block his sword with her bare hand. She channeled her starbolt energy through the blade, but Deathstroke let go before the energy could reach him and jumped back. Undeterred, Nightstar merely flipped the sword so that she was holding it by its hilt.

"Impressive reflexes," Deathstroke hissed. "You truly are your parents' child."

"Shut up," Nightstar spat, slashing Deathstroke with his own sword. Deathstroke took advantage of Nightstar's closeness and aimed a palm thrust for her stomach. Nightstar flipped back and threw herself into an aerial kick, only for Deathstroke to flip over her . . . and take back his sword. Nightstar merely landed gracefully on her feet and turned to face the assassin.

Deathstroke chuckled darkly. "Truly, I knew from the start that you'd be more than a handful."

"What are you talking about?" Nightstar asked indignantly.

"You mean your father didn't tell you? Very well. Allow me to enlighten you." The smirk was audible in his voice. "During my ill-fated truce with your father's Titans, I got to see you. It was only a little while after you were born . . . and even then, I knew you'd be more than a handful when you grew up." The smirk turned into something of a cruel leer. "I'm glad to see I've been proven right."

A Batarang flew at Deathstroke, only for the mercenary to catch it and throw it back at Batman with equal skill. Batman dodged the Batarang while Red Arrow and Red Hood began firing their arrows at Deathstroke, who dodged or caught those arrows with inhuman speed. Black Canary dashed in front of Deathstroke with a swift kick to the midsection, the force sending the mercenary flying back. However, he rolled to his feet upon landing on the ground and Executrix flipped over him, sword extended to attack Black Canary.

Inertia sped toward Ravager (Rose), who was costumed in indigo-black and sky blue, only for Ravager to block his attack. "Saw you," she whispered before kneeing him in the solar plexus and chopping his back.

Inertia rose to his feet, but before he could attack again Impulse was on him, shunting between this dimension and the Speed Force to confuse Inertia's senses. Savitrix was about to run to Inertia's aid, but Excel was giving her all she could handle and then some. The two quickstepped around each other, attacking and countering with equal ferocity if not necessarily equal skill.

Tempest (Garth) had forced the cursed magic inside Tsunami into remission, allowing his son to regain self-control. Tsunami immediately collapsed to his knees and vomited blood. He breathed heavily for a few moments before summoning the strength to stand up again. Immediately, he was attacked by an angry Ultrawoman and Lyta, only for his psychic vectors to catch them and throw them aside. Both girls flipped to their feet and attacked him again, this time with heat vision and mystical lightning, which Tsunami blocked with his vectors.

The battle ended, though, when Tempest paralyzed Ultrawoman and Lyta with a spell. "I could have done that," Tsunami grumbled.

"Yeah, but you're still weak from using Lyta's curse again," Tempest replied evenly. "Better save your strength."

Black Canary blocked Executrix's sword with a layer of techno-organic mesh covering her arm and a blade extended from that mesh. Executrix flipped up into the air and slashed Black Canary while she was in midair, only for Black Canary to retaliate with a slash of her own blade. Both girls straightened up and sped toward each other for another go, slashing each other as they passed. Both girls managed to wound each other, only for neither one to be satisfied with just that.

The Bat-and-Arrow father-daughter duos were on Deathstroke, Red Arrow and Red Hood performing long-range with their arrows and Batman and Nightstar fighting the mercenary in close quarters. Deathstroke not only had to dodge the archers' arrows, he also had to block and counter Batman's and Nightstar's attacks. He could definitely do it, of course, but the four of them were fighting more intensely than he was used to from his opponents. Fortunately, that was what enhanced reflexes and coordination were for, and there was always banter to throw his opponents off their game.

"I never did expect you to put on your father's colors," he remarked to Batman. "But I do like the improvements you've made to the costume."

Batman's response was to dodge another slash of Deathstroke's sword and twist to kick him in the chin. Deathstroke quickly recovered, of course, only for his retaliatory punch to be blocked by Nightstar's bracer. Nightstar grabbed Deathstroke's wrist with her other hand and half-twisted, half-flipped into a kick that sent the mercenary flying before he hit the ground. To her surprise, she could hear an almost mirthful laugh from Deathstroke's prone form.

"What the hell is so funny?" Nightstar asked.

Deathstroke rose to his feet and cracked his neck. "You're definitely impressive. Grayson taught you well."

At that moment, Robin blitzed Deathstroke, only for Deathstroke to parry his sword and retaliate by thrusting his own sword at the younger man. Robin barely managed to duck under the broadsword and twist into a low kick meant to trip the assassin, who jumped up to evade Robin's leg. Deathstroke somersaulted in midair and uncurled to kick a rising Robin in the chest, knocking him back into Nightstar's arms.

"Glad to see you're back in this," she remarked.

"Let's go," Robin answered.

Nightstar flew at Deathstroke, Robin gripping her arm with both hands. Once she was close enough, she swung Robin into a fierce kick, adding her force to his. Their combined strength knocked Deathstroke down, but he quickly back-flipped onto his feet, ready to continue the fight. Nightstar and Robin landed on their feet, also ready to continue the fight, with Batman, Red Arrow, and Red Hood also at the ready.

"To me, Executrix," Deathstroke ordered. Obediently, Executrix flipped over to Deathstroke's side, while Black Canary landed beside Red Arrow and Red Hood. "Six on two. I like those odds."

"Prepare to like them a lot less," Red Arrow retorted.

Meanwhile, Ultrawoman and Lyta had broken free of Tempest's paralytic spell and were now fighting Changeling (Gar), Donna, Superboy, and Cyborg (Vic). Changeling shifted into his strongest, toughest, most ferocious animal forms to aid Donna in her battle with Lyta. Cyborg fired sonic pulses at Ultrawoman, who dodged those while fighting Superboy.

The speedsters' battle had now become three on two, with the Flash and his twins being the three and Savitrix and Inertia being the two. That didn't necessarily stop either dark speedster from fighting their heroic counterparts with everything they had. Inertia generated sonic booms by snapping his fingers at super-speed, while Savitrix augmented her blows with kinetic pulses. Impulse weaved between the physical world and the Speed Force to confuse Inertia as he attacked him, while Excel excited the air molecules between her and Savitrix to generate slicing winds.

Ravager and Jericho (Joey) had entered the battle against Deathstroke and Executrix, making the fight eight against two. Neither Deathstroke nor Executrix seemed all that bothered by this, although the strain was beginning to show in their movements. Swords, arrows, Batarangs, and shuriken flashed everywhere, along with the stray starbolt-enhanced punch or chop or palm thrust.

"As difficult as this is, it's actually quite fun," Deathstroke remarked.

"Fun? Is that what you call it?" Red Arrow asked. "You're sick."

Deathstroke's answer was to slash at Red Arrow, even as Black Canary and Robin blocked him with their blades. He pushed against both teenagers, but they pushed back against him, giving him no ground. Ravager and Nightstar slid between Black Canary and Robin to kick Deathstroke together, just as Batman threw his Batarangs and Red Hood fired her arrows at him. Despite being in unwilling flight, he managed to twist to evade or catch the Batarangs and arrows. When he landed, he did so on one hand, using it to spring onto his feet and draw his guns.

Red Hood switched out her bow for a crossbow, which she placed in its "rapid fire" setting. Deathstroke opened fire, prompting the eight fighting him to dodge his gunfire. A la Wonder Woman, Nightstar used her bracers to block the gunshots, while Ravager employed her dual katana to block her father's fire. Twin Batarangs flew at Deathstroke to stop his fire, but Deathstroke twisted into the air to evade those Batarangs. He swiftly reloaded his guns while in midair and landed just as Red Hood's crossbow bolt grazed his arm.

Deathstroke looked at Red Hood. "You . . . Cheshire's girl." His finger tightened on the trigger of the gun he had pointed at her. "Let's see if you have your father's reflexes."

Red Hood smirked at him, her special sunglasses concealing the fear that would be visible if her eyes were exposed. "Let's see if _your_ reflexes are as 'instantaneous' as they're made out to be." Her finger tightened on the trigger of her crossbow.

The moment Deathstroke pulled the trigger, he found himself barely – _barely_ – dodging the armor-piercing arrow that sped toward him. Red Hood did manage to dodge his bullet, partly through her own honed reflexes and partly through the optical enhancements of her sunglasses. Several crossbow bolts with armor-piercing tips found themselves embedded in Deathstroke mere moments later.

Executrix blitzed Ravager, who blocked Executrix's katana with hers. Executrix back-flipped into a kick that caught Ravager by the chin, Ravager turning her fall into a handspring that brought her back on her feet. The two costumed females faced off briefly, silently assessing each other before moving into another attack. The two darted around each other, evading and countering each other's attacks.

"Whoever you are, you're good," Ravager remarked. Something bothered her about Executrix, though; mainly the bisected mask, blue on one side, black on the other. Granted, both sides had an eye, but the bisected mask was a trademark of the Wilson clan, at least since Slade lost an eye to a furious ex-wife in the course of his career.

Executrix did not answer her, at least not in words. Instead, she dropped to deliver a low sweeping kick, which Ravager evaded and returned with a kick to Executrix, knocking her to the ground. Ravager proceeded to tackle Executrix and rip her mask off, only to blink in utter surprise when she saw the face beneath it. Batman and Jericho were quite shocked themselves.

The face of Executrix, now revealed, was that of a blonde girl who couldn't be older than twenty at most. Her eyes were an intense blue, sapphires that glinted like cold steel. Her features were sharp and strong, yet undeniably pleasing to the eye. Her thin lips were pursed in a defiant, angry expression. Seeing that face . . . was like seeing another face, so long ago . . .

_Grant?_ Jericho thought. He signed his suspicion to Batman and Ravager.

"Who's Grant?" Robin asked, having learned to read sign language from Nightstar.

Jericho signed to him, _My brother. Long dead. I had no idea . . . if I had, I'd have . . ._

"So!" Ravager exploded at her father. "You take another kid with your blood in her veins and turn her into a miniature mirror of you!"

"Considering you were worthless and Joey has no interest in what I have to offer, what choice did I have?" Deathstroke asked harshly.

Having turned to chew out her father, Ravager was distracted enough for Executrix to punch her. Ravager snapped back into focus in time to roll with the punch, lest her neck be broken, but Executrix had sprung free and was now standing.

"Give me back my mask," she snarled.

"You want it?" Ravager asked. "Take it!"

She threw the mask into the air and sliced it into uselessness, prompting an expression of cold rage to form on Executrix's face. In a burst of speed, the girl lunged at Ravager with her katana aimed at her aunt's throat. Ravager blocked the blade with her own and kneed Executrix in the stomach.

"You think he loves you?" Ravager asked icily. "He doesn't. You think he's the only one who gives a damn what happens to you? He isn't. Everything he tells you _is a sick lie,_ meant to keep you with him for as long as he finds you useful."

Executrix straightened up and slashed at Ravager again, only for Ravager to dodge and move behind her. Executrix whirled to evade Ravager's next attack and tripped the older woman. As Ravager fell, Executrix kicked her in the stomach, hastening her unwilling descent. She leaped at Ravager, who bent her legs back, catching Executrix on them and kicking her off. Executrix contorted in midair and landed in a feral crouch, glaring at Ravager.

"What did you do to her?" Batman asked. "Dose her on your serum, too?"

"With some cyber-viral modifications to her nervous system," Deathstroke added, having pulled Red Hood's bolts out of himself.

"You sound like you're proud of yourself," Red Arrow remarked, horrified.

Jericho signed rapidly and furiously, _You are not my father. My father had more respect for human dignity than to turn another, much less his own grandchild, into his virtual slave!_

"That hurts, Joseph," Deathstroke remarked sharply. "Truly, it does."

"Not as much as _this_ will!" Ravager answered, moving in for a killing strike, only for Executrix to block the strike with her own body, shocking everyone present. Even as Ravager registered her blades piercing Executrix, the girl grabbed her wrists, holding her tightly.

"Finish her . . ." Executrix whispered harshly.

"What is she . . . ?" Nightstar asked.

"Oh, Christ," Red Hood uttered. "Slade's gonna run her through to get to Rose!"

"No, she won't," Black Canary snarled. With a burst of speed impossible to define as anything other than superhuman, she intercepted Deathstroke's blade.

"Tenacious, aren't you?" Deathstroke remarked. "Very much like your mother."

"What do you know about her?" Black Canary questioned angrily.

"More than you think, little songbird," Deathstroke answered with a smirk in his tone. "More than you think."

At that moment, Executrix pulled herself off Ravager's blades and back-flipped into the air to tackle Black Canary from behind. Black Canary whirled, grabbed Executrix's wrists, and threw her into Deathstroke. Executrix twisted in midair during her unwilling flight and landed, skidding, on the balls of her feet, backing up against Deathstroke. With only a look between them to silently communicate, Executrix and Deathstroke attacked Black Canary on opposite sides.

Red Hood managed to get off a shot with her bow at Deathstroke despite how fast he, Executrix, and Black Canary were moving, but Deathstroke grabbed the arrow just as the tip neared his remaining eye. "Not bad," he remarked before tossing the arrow aside.

Nightstar lunged into the fray to assist Black Canary, taking on Deathstroke and Executrix with her. Black Canary blocked Executrix's blade strikes with her gloved hands, while Nightstar evaded and countered Deathstroke's attacks. Finally, Nightstar let off a point-blank starbolt, sending Deathstroke flying close to the entrance of Titans Lair.

Executrix shoved Black Canary aside and went after Nightstar, intent on avenging her grandfather and mentor. Nightstar blocked the flurry of blade strikes to the best of her ability, but Executrix's eyes told her that she was nearly insane with rage. _Just what kind of hold does he have on her?_ Nightstar wondered.

With a starbolt-enhanced palm thrust, Nightstar knocked Executrix down, if not necessarily for the count. Leaving Executrix behind, Nightstar stalked toward Deathstroke, misty purple energy emanating from her hands. "What are you doing, Mar'i?" Batman asked.

"Settling things," Nightstar replied tersely. "Like you never had the will to do."

Deathstroke chuckled. "You really think you can kill me, girl?"

"Kill you?" Nightstar repeated. "I don't _need_ to kill you. Look around." She gestured toward the battlefield, pointing out the now-defeated Reverse-Titans. "Your pawns are vanquished. You're outnumbered and outgunned. Your life . . . such as it is . . . is in my hands."

"Tough talk from such a delicate flower." Deathstroke's tone was rather smug for someone who was now staring down a restrained starbolt.

"Some flowers are poisonous, no matter how delicate they look." Nightstar's tone was colder than death.

"You really think you can kill me? Do it. Put me out of your misery."

"As you wish." A flash of purple energy later, Deathstroke had a hole in his midsection from a high-power starbolt. His armor was burned away and his midsection was severely burned and bleeding.

"What . . ." Deathstroke chuckled. "I knew you didn't have what it takes to kill me. You're just like your father. Your mother would have done the job. That was the one thing I liked about her."

"Like I said, I don't need to kill you. Just reminding you that you're not as invincible as you think . . . is satisfaction in and of itself. At any time, I could kill you and someday . . ." She crouched down in front of him to whisper in his ear. "_I will._ Remember that." She straightened up and turned to walk back to her family and fellow Titans.

Deathstroke looked up, staring heatedly at Batman, Nightstar, and Robin and Red Arrow, Red Hood, and Black Canary. Seeing the familial trios did nothing except remind him of what he had lost all those years ago, what he had sacrificed for his career. Despite the pain in his abdomen, he rose to his feet and stalked toward Executrix, picking her up and glaring at the assembled Titans, old and new.

"Don't think we're letting you off so easily," Red Arrow warned. "Enough's enough, Slade."

"Really, Harper?" Deathstroke asked threateningly. "I've heard that said before . . . and each time, your kind seems perfectly willing to let me go."

"That was then . . . this is now," the Flash answered, he and his twins triple-teaming Deathstroke. Despite the assassin's impressive reflexes, there was little to no chance of him fighting three speedsters at once and winning, especially since he had Executrix to watch out for. The only thing that allowed him to last at all was that the Flashes were quite concerned for Executrix's safety as well. Downed by the trio and with arrows and sonic weapons pointed at him, there was very little for him to do except possibly admit that he'd lost.

Raven walked toward Deathstroke, having healed Tsunami's internal injuries. "What do you think you're going to do, witch?" Deathstroke taunted.

Raven didn't answer his jibe, not in words, anyway. Instead, she kneeled before him and black energy began to transfer from him to her, entering through the chakra gem on her forehead. "What is she doing?" Impulse asked. Raven didn't answer, but when she finished, she looked to Impulse and his father and sister.

"Release him. He will do no harm now."

They obeyed and Deathstroke slumped to the ground. "What did you do?" Excel asked.

"I ate his hate, his anger, and his malice," Raven replied. "I ate the corruption he allowed to fester in his soul."

Jericho placed a gentle hand on Raven's shoulder as she rose to her feet. Raven reached behind her and gently placed her hand over Jericho's. "Let's go home," she whispered.

* * *

With the Reverse-Titans and Deathstroke in custody and Executrix taken into Joey's care, the heroic Titans and their parents had gathered in the "Batcave" employed by Nightstar and Red Hood. An unmasked Robin glared at Batman and Red Arrow. "We had the situation well in hand. We didn't need your interference."

For that, he got slapped upside the head by Red Hood. "Shut up, Damian, and try a little appreciation."

"What got you to come?" Nightstar asked.

"Your Uncle Roy got us together," an unmasked Batman admitted. "Said he wasn't gonna let his girls' blood get spilled by 'a goddamn maniac like Slade,' especially not where we started the Titans."

"And we all had to come with him to make sure he didn't hurt himself going after him," Donna added with an affectionate timbre.

"So . . . how long do you think Deathstroke's gonna stay locked up?" an unmasked Flash inquired sardonically.

"With all the crimes he's committed, a long time," Vic answered.

"Well, we kicked ass, didn't we?" Jai remarked. He pumped his fist. "One, two! Didn't see what hit 'em!"

"I suppose we did," Dick admitted with a slight smile. He turned to Mar'i. "But what was with threatening Deathstroke like that?"

"Wanted to send him a message," Mar'i replied simply. "And I hope you're not going to give me a sanctimonious speech about the sanctity of life. He's a remorseless killer."

"She's right," Roy agreed. "Dick, I know you and he used to be somewhat close allies – don't want to know just how close – but he's changed. You can't do anything for him except put him where he can't hurt anyone anymore."

"Even if that's the grave?" Dick wondered.

"Not necessarily," Roy answered. "A maximum-security prison cell for meta-criminals will do well enough."

"Which _is_ where he's going, right?" Lian prompted.

"Definitely, if we've got anything to say about it," Donna replied.

"Are you going to do this all the time?" Olivia asked.

"Do what? Bail you guys out of trouble?" Roy surmised. "Nah. We won't do that _all_ the time. We trust you to handle stuff on your own. This was just personal for us."

"I hope it won't be personal all the time," Iris remarked. "Because you're gonna have to get used to the fact that people want us dead."

"Do we have to?" Wally mock whined.

"Yeah," Iris replied with a smirk and folded arms.

"Eh, I suppose there's no helping it," Wally admitted. "It's like Jay's always saying, 'The last generation gives way to the next. That's the way it works. All we can do is prepare them to accept the responsibilities that come with it.'"

"Wow, you almost sounded like Great-grandpa Jay there for a minute," Jai remarked.

Wally chuckled. "You think so, huh?"

"Come on," Dick said. "I think we ought to give our kids some space."

"Yeah," Roy admitted.

As Dick, Roy, Wally, and Garth bid their "see you at home's" to their children, Donna watched with an expression of sad, wistful envy. Gar happened to catch her expression and nuzzled her as a green kitten. Donna picked him up and petted him gently.

"Does it hurt?" Gar asked quietly.

"Yes," Donna whispered, "and I suppose it always will, at least a little."

* * *

When Slade Wilson came to, he saw the inside of a jail cell. "So . . . this is what it's come down to," he whispered to himself.

He had to admit, the new Titans were better than he'd expected them to be. They had to be, if they were going to last against him, and last they had. Robin had been somewhat of a disappointment to him, but Grayson's girl, Harper's girl, and Queen's girl . . . had been extraordinary. Harper's girl had managed to tag him when Harper himself failed and Grayson's girl and Queen's girl could fight him on equal terms, even if they didn't have his sheer skill.

Mar'i Grayson was surprisingly vicious, something she'd no doubt inherited from her late mother. He'd thought her father would have trained that out of her, but it seemed that spark of Tamaranean fire was impossible to fully snuff out. That was just fine and dandy by him; it would make her a more interesting opponent to ultimately best, as he had so many before her. Then maybe he could do with her what he had never quite managed to do with her father.

As for Madison Avalon . . . the girl was out of his hands now, as long as he was in this place. His son and daughter were probably hard at work undoing his work on her as he rotted. Well, they could try all they wanted; it wouldn't make a difference. Madison would always be loyal to him. It wasn't like she had anyone else in the world.

In the meantime, he would bide his time. He would lie in wait, like a silent predator, and when the time came . . .

* * *

End Notes: In case you were confused by anything in this chapter, I'm gonna be brief about it. In the first two issues of New Teen Titans, Grant Wilson, the first Ravager, had an ex-girlfriend that he was trying to get back together with, only to be chased off by Starfire and Donna Troy. My reasoning is that said ex-girlfriend was secretly pregnant with his child but later gave her up for adoption, hence the existence of Madison Avalon-slash-Executrix.

As for Donna, she was married once, back in the eighties. Had a son with the man she married, but she later divorced her husband after some persistent troubles within the relationship and then that husband and son died in a car accident. Hence, her sadness when she was looking at her fellow original Titans with their children; she envies them for having the opportunities that were taken from her.

And on that note, that's the end of this particular story arc. It's not the end of the story itself, as it will be an ongoing until I run out of ideas. See you next time.


	12. Secret Origin: Lian Harper

"Titans: Legacies"

Secret Origins: "Mistress of the Bow"

"The Secret Origin of Lian Harper"

Disclaimer: Neither Teen Titans nor the larger universe it inhabits belong to me. They belong to DC Comics and Time Warner. I make no monetary profit from this story whatsoever.

Author's note: It's time for Lian's secret origin. Granted, if you follow Roy Harper, you probably know a lot about Lian Harper already. This is more about how she grew from the cute little kid depicted in the comics to the ass-kicking archer you see in the current timeframe of Titans: Legacies. Hopefully, you enjoy this tale. Anyway, let's get going, shall we?

* * *

"_Congratulations, Lian. You have a little sister."_

"_I already have a little sister. Her name's Mar'i."_

"_Yeah, but now you have an even littler sister to take care of. Wanna see her?"_

"_Ok!"_

* * *

Seven-year-old Lian Harper looked at the baby resting peacefully in her crib, a mantle made of canaries and arrows hovering above her head. Her room was painted a soft bluish purple, with black canaries and green arrowheads decorating the walls. The baby herself was slumbering peacefully.

Then she started to cry.

Lian swore in Dineh, something she'd overheard from her father, and left the room to get Ollie and Dinah. They made the squalling infant; they could take care of her. Of course, she hadn't even taken more than three steps out of the room when Dinah practically bowled her over trying to get to the baby. Ollie was right behind her, sidestepping Lian to get to the baby.

Dinah was gently shushing the baby, with Ollie at her side. "Are you ok, little canary?"

The "little canary" soon began cooing and reaching up to grab Dinah's hair. Dinah winced slightly at the force the baby was using to tug on her hair, but smiled. Beside her, Ollie chuckled. "You think that's bad, you should see how she is with my beard."

"I _know_ how bad she is with it," Dinah remarked sardonically. "She actually tore out a chunk of hair. You were crying about it all day."

"I go to great trouble to groom that thing just right," Ollie protested lightly.

"Yeah, and I've been telling you for years that you ought to trim it down," Dinah retorted with a smile.

Lian giggled. "You two are silly. I'm never going to worry about my hair the way you do."

"Just wait till you get older and realize boys are attractive," Ollie chided. "Just wait."

"I don't even like boys."

"You say that now . . . but give it five years or so and then come back and see if you can say that with a straight face."

"You'll see. I'll be your age and I still won't like boys. I've got better things to do."

"Like what?" Dinah prodded.

"Become the best archer in the world! Better than Grandpa Ollie, Daddy, Uncle Connor, and Aunt Mia!"

"A better archer than me?" Ollie asked. He put his hand over his heart in mock horror. "No, that can't be!"

"It'll be, Grandpa Ollie. It'll be."

"You might as well get to bed, little Dart," Dinah advised. "Leave Olivia to us."

"Sure, Aunt Dinah," Lian answered. "Bye-bye, little sister."

_

* * *

_

Three years later

* * *

The arrow hit dead center, but only at 100 fps. "Too slow," Lian mumbled to herself.

She tried again, drawing back the string . . . and fired. This time, the arrow hit the target at 137 fps, but a little off center. "Better," Lian whispered.

She prepared a third arrow, pulled back the string . . . and released. The arrow struck the target at 155 fps, but was just as off-center as the one before. "Not bad," she muttered, but she wasn't going to stop until she reached her target speed of 200 fps.

"Lian!" a small, childish voice chirped.

Lian accidentally released the fourth arrow she'd been preparing and the arrow went far off target. However, it did achieve a speed of 174 fps, so it wasn't a total loss. Suppressing her annoyance with the little girl, Lian turned to acknowledge the speaker, a tow-headed three-year-old by the name of Olivia Queen. The little girl wore a pair of black leggings and an arrow-printed T-shirt that positively dwarfed her.

"Hi, Olivia."

"Hi, Lian! Can you teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow?!"

"Sure. I just have to find a nice kid-sized one for you."

"Lian!" Olivia whined. "Why can't I have a big one like yours?!"

Lian bit her lip to stifle a groan, concluding at that moment that Olivia was definitely going to inherit her mother's canary cry. "Because you're too young. There."

"No fair!"

"Life isn't fair." Lian's tone was chirpy enough, but there was a certain undercurrent of bitterness in it.

"Why isn't it fair?" Olivia asked.

"Because if life was fair, good people wouldn't stop existing," Lian replied. "They'd go on forever."

"My mommy and daddy will go on forever!" Olivia protested.

"No, they won't," Lian muttered to herself. She'd stopped believing that fallacy when Koriand'r died and _didn't_ come back, unlike a certain Donna Troy. For Olivia's sake, she did not say it louder. Olivia was an innocent. She deserved to hold onto that for as long as she could. "Shoo. You're bothering me."

"I heard that and I'm gonna tell Mommy you were mean to me!" Olivia shouted. "She'll take care of you!" She stormed away from the training grounds, while Lian patiently rolled her eyes and resumed her self-training. The next arrow flew into the target's center . . . at 200 fps.

"I did it!"

"I see," Roy remarked, smiling. "Not bad, _etai yazi._ Not bad at all. Keep this up, and you'll be better than me in no time."

"Exactly," Lian agreed. "I'm going to be the best."

"Now what's this about you telling Olivia that good people would go on forever if life was fair?" His tone was both good-humored and solicitous, a mix he had mastered quite well in his years as a father.

"It's true. If life was fair, Mar'i would still have a mother."

"Is that what this is about?" Roy asked.

"Yeah . . . and Olivia said that Aunt Dinah and Grandpa Ollie would go on forever. I wish . . . I really wish I could think that, too."

"Part of growing up is letting go of those things but not being bitter about it," Roy said in his best "old sage" tone, which was utterly abominable since he hadn't gotten to Alan's, Jay's, or Ted's age. "It's ok to feel hurt that the things you thought were true when you were young aren't true. Just don't be too hard on Livy, all right?"

"Sure, Dad," Lian answered.

"Now keep at it . . . Dart," Roy said. "See you at dinnertime."

_

* * *

_

Eighteen months later

* * *

Lian walked down the prison hall, escorted by an ominously armored guard. She wore a pair of red-tinted sunglasses and a red tunic and shorts resembling her father's outfit during his days as Speedy. As she walked, she thought about what exactly she would say to the person she had come to see. Nothing else seemed to exist at this moment, not the inmates' cells lining the walls, not the guard beside her, just her . . . and _her._

"We're here," the guard spoke, his distorted voice interrupting her thoughts.

"Thanks," Lian replied. "You can leave now."

"I can't do that, Miss Harper," the guard dissented. "If she tries anything . . ."

"I can handle myself," Lian answered. "And she won't do anything to me. I'm her daughter."

The guard slid his key card through the reader next to the wrought steel door. The reader scanned his card and, finding that it contained the proper codes, opened the door, which slid aside. Lian stepped inside and the door closed behind her with a heavy clang.

With the inmates or the guard unable to see her, Lian removed her sunglasses, revealing crystal jade eyes. She walked down to the far side of the room, seeing a woman in prison drab sprawled on the bed with a book. If one looked closely at the woman and at Lian, one would see a definite resemblance between them, as though Lian was a younger version of the woman or the woman was an older version of Lian. It was a resemblance Lian had come to hate.

"Lian," the woman greeted, looking up from her book.

"Mom," Lian answered frostily.

The woman was none other than Jade Nguyen, better known as Cheshire, the alias she employed when she did her work. Said work just happened to be assassinations, and she specialized in poisons. She was particularly fond of using poisoned blades in a fight, and her expertise in toxins meant that she could kill her targets quickly or she could protract their suffering if she wanted.

Jade looked up, examining Lian from head to toe. Something flashed in her eyes when she saw Lian's hair, something that Lian could hardly decipher. Was it anger? Was it bitterness? Was it grief? Was it disappointment? Was it despair? Was she on the verge of an emotional implosion, or would it be an explosion instead?

"What did you do to your hair?" Jade asked conversationally, her voice carefully stripped of anger.

"I dyed it," Lian replied.

Indeed, Lian had dyed her hair. Instead of being straight and black, it was now a cascade of curly red-orange waves. Combined with the outfit she was wearing, it made her look like her father . . . like the man Jade had once loved, if indeed she was ever capable of that emotion. Lian placed no faith in the idea that Jade Nguyen was capable of love.

"You're here without your father," Jade remarked, changing the subject quickly.

"I thought it was time we talked alone," Lian answered. "Woman to woman."

"'Woman to woman'?" Jade echoed. "You've certainly grown. How is your father doing, by the way?"

"He's fine," Lian replied curtly.

"Is there something wrong?" Jade's tone was almost solicitous.

"F#& yes, something's wrong!" Lian had snapped. She had been planning on acting cold, but something about seeing her mother act so calmly shattered her desire to act as such. "My mother is an unrepentant killer who'll spend the rest of her life in this place if she doesn't break out or get executed! Do you have any idea how much it hurts when people ask me, 'Where's your mother?' or 'What does your mother do?' or 'Why don't you have a mommy?'"

"I can't change for you," Jade answered bitterly. "This is the way I am."

"Bull#&!" Lian spat. "You chose this. You chose to be a killer. You decided that that was more important than anything else, even me."

"That's why I let your father have you," Jade whispered. "Because he could do for you what I could not, give you a home, ensure your safety . . . If I didn't love you, I would have kept you for myself, made you like me."

"That's not love," Lian snarled. "That's just the path of least resistance." She glared into Jade's eyes, eyes that were the color of her name, eyes that matched hers in every way except that they were darker and harder. "I'm going to be 12 at midnight tonight. That's a good day to make a new start, and I've decided to make mine. I'm done with you . . . Cheshire."

She turned on her heel to walk away from Jade, donning her sunglasses again. As she walked away, she hit the communicator and called, "Guard. I'm finished here."

The door slid open and Lian stepped out just before the door slid shut again. The guard escorted Lian away from the cell, although Lian could swear that she felt the sound of silent tears coming from the cell of the woman she had once called mother.

_

* * *

_

Two years and four months later

* * *

Lian blocked her attacker's kris with her combat knife, grabbing his wrist and using it as a support while she flipped to kick him in his helmeted head. The attacker soared back, only to turn his unwilling flight into a back-flip and skid on the soles of his heavy boots. She could practically see his smirk beneath that red helmet he wore.

"Don't tell me you think it's over already," the Red Hood mocked.

"Like I'd insult you like that," Lian replied sardonically. "Come on."

"No, you come on," Red Hood retorted. "Not all your opponents are gonna come at you. Sometimes you need to take the fight to them, preferably while you've already got them on the ropes. Give them any chance to recover, and they'll be on your ass again in no time."

"Here I come, then!" Lian announced, lunging at Red Hood with her combat knife extended. Red Hood blocked her attack with his kris and used her outstretched arm as leverage to flip her over his head. Lian twisted in midair and swung her leg out at his head, but he ducked in time, leaving her to land on her free hand and twist into a low kick that caught him in the stomach.

"Not bad," Red Hood remarked. "Dickie-bird's been teaching you, hasn't he?"

"He's a good teacher," Lian replied.

"But I'm better, right?" The cockiness in his tone couldn't be mistaken, but something about that tone told Lian it was false.

"Yeah, you're better."

"I appreciate the compliment." His tone had reverted to its usual snarky pattern, but there was a hint of genuine appreciation in it. "Come on. Let's do this."

Lian swung at him with her combat knife, but Red Hood jumped back and lunged with his kris extended. Lian barely dodged and hooked her leg around his, pulling hard on it. Red Hood began to trip, but he landed on his free hand and twisted out of Lian's grip and into a low kick that caught Lian in the stomach. Unlike him, she wasn't wearing armor, so the kick hit her harder than hers had done with him. In fact, the kick hit her with such force that it knocked her flat on her rear.

Red Hood turned and walked over to her, offering his gloved hand. She took it and rose to her feet. "I think we're done for now," he said.

"Why?"

"You need to regain your strength. We've been at this for almost three hours, and your dad's bound to worry about you."

"He always worries."

"That means he's a good father. Unlike some people."

"You're not referring to Uncle Dick, are you?"

"Hell, yes, I'm referring to Golden Wing. Him and Daddy Bats. At least Golden Wing has a reason; he lost the woman he loved. Daddy Bats was just a selfish, hypocritical f#&."

"That's not true," Lian protested. "Uncle Dick's a good dad."

"If he's such a good dad, why was your best friend . . . a girl you think of as your sister . . . living with me for two whole months?" The tone of Red Hood's voice reeked of sardonic bitterness. "And why was Damian Wayne, the only one of us who was actually the fruit of that son of a bitch's loins, the kid Daddy Bats trusted Dickie-bird to take care of, living with me for six months before Mar'i came to join us? He ain't that good."

Lian sifted through Red Hood's words for any indication of falsehood, any hint that he was lying. To her horror, she couldn't find any. She knew Dick had had his bad moments, times when his pain was so great that it led him to withdraw from everyone around him. Those times hurt, but she had been comforted by the fact that he would always get over those moments and come back to her and her father. The idea that her favorite uncle had treated his own children even worse . . .

"It's ok," Red Hood whispered in a hissing tone somewhere between comforting and foreboding. "Let it out."

_

* * *

_

One week later

* * *

Lian turned in her sleeping bag to look at the girl sleeping beside her. She seemed so peaceful, so utterly at ease it was as though the last year had never happened. On impulse, Lian reached out to stroke the other girl's wavy black locks, feeling the unnatural softness of her hair.

"Mar'i . . ." she breathed out, although the other girl wouldn't hear, so deep in sleep she was.

When she and her father had come to pick up Mar'i to sleep over at their house for the weekend, Roy had sent her up to Mar'i's room. When Lian and Mar'i came down, they saw Dick with a forming bruise on his cheek. Roy had just looked at the girls calmly and said, "Come on, time to go."

Lian had wanted to ask why her Uncle Dick had a bruise on his face, but had been too afraid of what the answer might be. The reason she'd been afraid was that whatever answer Roy would give her would simply confirm her worst fears about what had become of her favorite uncle since her favorite aunt died. Therefore, she had spent the journey back home in silence, holding Mar'i's hand in the backseat of her father's car.

In the present, Lian continued stroking Mar'i's hair, feeling how the strands seemed to wrap around her fingers like they had a will of their own. She looked at Mar'i's sleeping face, so utterly at rest that it was hard to believe that the last year had happened. She would ask her about it in the daytime; for now, she was just enjoying the younger girl's closeness, even though they were in separate sleeping bags.

Without even realizing it, Lian had begun leaning closer to Mar'i, her breath coming in shallow pants. Her body strained against the sleeping bag she inhabited, trying to get closer to Mar'i. As though sensing from her sleep what her best friend wanted, Mar'i unconsciously shifted closer to Lian. Just as their lips barely brushed each other, Lian pulled away in shock.

_I kissed her!_ Lian thought. _She's my sister and I kissed her!_

_But she is so very kissable, isn't she?_ a slithery voice whispered in her mind.

_That doesn't matter,_ Lian answered. _Sisters aren't supposed to kiss._

_She's not your sister in blood,_ the voice responded.

_Blood doesn't make family,_ Lian insisted. _Why . . ._

_You wanted to,_ the voice answered. _Seeing her so lovely, so peaceful, so beautiful . . . you wanted her. Admit it._

* * *

The next morning, Lian had gotten up to shower and get dressed, only to see Mar'i halfway dressed. Lian blushed and looked away, only to hear a musical giggle from Mar'i. "We're both girls," the caramel-bronzed girl remarked. "I don't see anything I have that you don't already have."

"Oh, gee, try one cup size?" Lian retorted sarcastically.

"Sleep well?"

"Yeah." Lian regretted how easily the lie passed her lips; she had always imagined that she could tell Mar'i everything and vice versa. So why hadn't Mar'i told her how horrible she felt with Dick? Why had she felt the need to run to Jason and Damian . . . instead of her and Roy?

Lian left her sleeping bag and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and shower. Once those things were over and done with, she returned to her room and got herself dressed, wearing a sleeveless red top that left her shoulder blades exposed and black latex pants. Once that was over with, she went downstairs to greet Mar'i and Roy for breakfast.

"You gonna go out dressed like that?" Roy jibed.

"Yeah," Lian replied with a gentle smirk.

Mar'i looked at Lian's shoulder, seeing a tattoo of five darts arranged in a five-pointed shape. "Where'd you get that tattoo?"

"Grace," Lian replied. She giggled. "You should have seen my dad's reaction. He nearly had a heart attack!"

"Hey, if my baby girl's marking up her body . . . I think I have a right to a heart attack!" Roy protested jovially. He turned to Mar'i and added, "Grace even influences her fashion choices. She wasn't wearing latex pants before they met."

"Well, Grace is somewhat of a role model," Lian admitted with a small smile. "She speaks her mind, she backs down from no one, and she goes after what she wants. I find that worthy of emulation."

"In that light, I suppose she's not too bad . . ." Roy conceded.

"And I win again." Lian smirked triumphantly.

"Does she do this all the time?" Mar'i asked.

"She's got me around her little finger," Roy replied, "but I wouldn't change that for anything in the world."

_

* * *

_

Fifteen months later

* * *

"You just turned twelve, right?"

"Your point?"

"You're so freaking oblivious, Cerdian."

"Oblivious to what?"

"You're going to be a real heartbreaker when you get older. But you'll be _my_ heartbreaker, understand?"

"Is there something you're trying to say that I'm just missing?" The recently twelve-year-old Atlantean mage-in-training blinked several times in rapid succession.

Lian smirked. "Let's just say I want to show you something."

"Show me what?"

The look of confusion on Cerdian's face was so utterly cute that Lian couldn't resist kissing him. Thus, she kissed him, and when his mouth opened in surprise – or in protest – she slipped her tongue inside. After a few seconds, she felt him relax, but it took a few more seconds before she felt his lips pressing back against hers.

_Score!_ Lian thought. _Wow, he's really good at this for a first-timer. Or did he practice with some sea nymphs?_ She nearly boiled with anger at the thought of Cerdian refining his kissing technique with a sea nymph, only to calm with a particularly soothing caress of her lips by his.

Of course, all good moments came to an end sooner or later. This proved to be no different, as the door to the coatroom opened and light shone in from the outside, obscured partly by Roy and Garth, with Dick and Donna behind them. Lian broke the kiss and looked up at her father with a wave.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hi yourself, Lian. Dragging young boys into the coatroom now?"

Cerdian blushed under the heat of Garth's stare, while Donna giggled behind him. "I don't see what's so amusing about this," Garth remarked dryly.

"Roy and I used to do this all the time back when we first formed the Titans," Donna replied with an impish smile.

"There are some things I'd rather not know about my dad, thank you very much, Aunt Donna," Lian drawled.

"Anyway, you two can get out of there now," Dick piped up.

Lian and Cerdian got out of the coatroom, just in time to see Iris West covering her mouth to muffle her giggles and Jai West openly grinning. The grin stopped when Lian gave Jai her best imitation of the original Batman's death glare. Behind her, she heard Wally heatedly inquire of Roy and Dick, "Which one of you taught her how to glare like _Batman?_"

_

* * *

_

Six months later

* * *

Lian Harper, alias Red Hood, rode down the streets on her motorcycle, following Black Canary and Green Arrow on Black Canary's motorcycle. Mia Dearden and Connor Hawke were on another motorcycle, and Red Arrow sat behind Red Hood. A black "sport combat vehicle" rode just ahead of the motorcycles, driven by Dick.

When they stopped, it was near a forest. Red Hood, Black Canary, Red Arrow, the two Green Arrows, Deadeye, and Batman removed themselves from their vehicles and spread out through the forest, watching out for guards. Any guards they spotted were taken out with arrows aimed for incapacitating but nonfatal areas. For Batman and Black Canary, who didn't typically use arrows, they simply knocked them out with their bare hands.

They moved through the forest separately, converging only when they were upon the facility where their objective was being held. Batman withdrew a Batarang and stalked toward the facility, the Arrows and Black Canary following his lead. As an experiment, he threw his Batarang at a spot on the ground ahead of them. Upon impact, there was a small explosion which knocked them all back slightly. Of course, they quickly regained their bearings and continued. They had no time to waste, after all.

Once in front of the facility, Red Arrow pulled out a card he had judiciously swiped from one of the guards he had knocked out and slashed it through the reader that would open the door. Then he stepped inside, Ollie and Dinah following him first and the others after them.

Inside was a scene of utter devastation, of both lives and of the interior of the facility itself. In the center of it all crouched a blonde girl, most likely in her mid-teens, "clad" in quasi-organic black metal that covered her arms, her legs, the outer edges of her face, and obscured the more intimate areas of her body. When she looked up, it was with horrified, misty green eyes.

"Mommy? Daddy?" she asked, looking at Dinah and Ollie. "Am I . . . ? Did I . . . ?"

"Olivia?" Dinah uttered, rushing to her daughter and hugging her tightly, tearfully. "What did they do to you?"

* * *

End Notes: There you have it, Lian's secret origin. The end of this chapter actually leads into the next chapter, which will explore Olivia Queen's secret origin. In case you guessed it, the scene with Lian and Jason Todd dovetails with Damian's and Mar'i's secret origins, since they're all friends more or less and all live in the same fictional universe that I've crafted. And you will see how Olivia changed from a normal little girl to what appears to be a super-powered (and somewhat unstable) teenager in the next chapter. In the meantime, thanks for reading.


	13. Secret Origin: Olivia Queen

"Titans: Legacies"

Secret Origins: "Canary Noir"

"The Secret Origin of Olivia Queen"

Disclaimer: Teen Titans and the larger universe it inhabits belong to DC Comics and, by extension, to Time Warner. I make no monetary profit whatsoever from this story, only grim satisfaction that someone is reading this.

Author's note: Now is the time for you to learn just how little Olivia grew into the superhuman bombshell you saw in the first chapters of this story. There's gonna be some stuff with Dinah and Ollie, too, as they are her parents and stuff with Roy and Lian, as they are her siblings-slash-cousins by unofficial adoption. There will be stuff with Mar'i as well, along with visits from Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe, a.k.a. Misfit. Anyway, read on and enjoy.

* * *

"_She's beautiful."_

"_She has your eyes."_

"_And your nose. I hope she has your smile, too."_

"_What are we going to call her?"_

"_Um, didn't we already pick out a name if the baby was a girl?"_

"_And we picked out a name if the baby was a boy, although I can't see how . . ."_

"_We'll combine them. Olivia Theodora Queen."_

"_Theodora? As in . . . Ted?"_

"_Yeah. Sound good to you?"_

"_It does. Hi there, Olivia Theodora Queen."_

* * *

A three-year-old Olivia crept into the training area of her father's house, watching her "big sister" Lian honing her archery skills. "Lian!" she chirped just as the older girl was about to release another arrow.

Lian turned to acknowledge her. "Hi, Olivia."

"Hi, Lian!" Olivia squealed excitedly. "Can you teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow?!"

"Sure," Lian replied indulgently. "I just have to find a nice kid-sized one for you."

Olivia stomped her foot indignantly. "Lian! Why can't I have a big one like yours?!"

Lian sighed. "Because you're too young. There."

Olivia stomped her foot again, harder this time. "No fair!"

"Life isn't fair," Lian replied chirpily, albeit with an undercurrent that Olivia couldn't quite decipher. However, something about those three simple words, those four simple syllables, made Olivia curious.

"Why isn't it fair?"

"Because if life was fair, good people wouldn't stop existing. They'd go on forever."

That made no sense to Olivia. People couldn't stop existing. Things didn't just snap out of existence one day. It was impossible. She couldn't imagine it. And her mommy and daddy were good people, so . . . they couldn't just stop existing. They just couldn't.

"My mommy and daddy will go on forever!" she declared fervently.

"No, they won't," she heard Lian mutter. In a much clearer voice, Lian added, "Shoo. You're bothering me."

"I heard that and I'm gonna tell Mommy you were mean to me!" Olivia announced furiously. "She'll take care of you!" With that vow firmly in her mind, the tow-headed girl stormed out of the training grounds and went looking for her mother. Of course, instead of finding her mother, she found Lian's dad Roy.

"Big brother!" Olivia exclaimed. "Where's Mommy?"

"Mommy has important work to do with the Justice League, but she'll be back later for you," Roy replied. "Now what's wrong?"

"Lian was mean to me!"

Roy gasped. "How's that possible?"

"She wouldn't let me practice with her big girl bow and arrow and then she said Mommy and Daddy would stop existing someday!" Olivia blurted out indignantly.

"Um, Lian was looking out for your safety," Roy replied. "She was scared that if you practiced with her bow, you might hurt yourself. And your mommy and daddy are always going to be there, even if you can't always see them."

"So Lian was wrong?"

"Yeah, I suppose so . . ."

"Good! Now take care of her!"

Roy chuckled and ruffled Olivia's hair. "Sure. I'll do that for you."

"Thanks!"

"You're welcome. Now, before I go get Lian, you want some juice?"

"Yeah."

_

* * *

_

Two years later

* * *

"Mar'i!" Olivia greeted, tackle-hugging the older girl. "I missed you!"

"I missed you, too, Livy," Mar'i replied with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"I'm glad you're here, Mar'i," Dinah greeted. "Ever since that first day, all she can talk about is you."

"Really?" Mar'i asked.

"Yeah," Dinah confirmed. "She thinks the world of you."

Mar'i gently scooped up Olivia and walked inside the manor while carrying her. "So what is it this time? Business with the League? A mission from Aunt Babs?"

"Both," Dinah replied. "Your Aunt Babs gave me permission to bring with me a team of female operatives that I trust most."

"Are you gonna bring Charlie with you?" Mar'i asked.

"That's top secret, Mar'i," Dinah replied. "Can't say who I'll bring with me. You never know who might be listening."

"Ok," Mar'i conceded. "Have fun."

"I intend to." Dinah smirked and kissed Olivia on the cheek. "Be good for Mar'i, ok, little canary?"

"Ok, Mommy," Olivia said.

Once Dinah was gone, Mar'i carried Olivia into the den and sat down on the couch. "So . . . what do you want to do?"

"I want you to teach me how to fight," Olivia replied.

"Really?"

"Yeah. I wanna do like my mommy and beat up bad guys."

"Ok. I'll show you how, but we'll have to be careful."

"Why?" Olivia was confused.

"I'm bigger and stronger than you are. I could hurt you if I didn't control myself."

"You wouldn't hurt me. I know you wouldn't."

"If you say so . . ." Mar'i looked away for a while before turning back to Olivia. "Ok, let's do it."

Mar'i took Olivia to the training area hidden in the manor's basement. "All right, I'll show you some stances."

The Tamaranean hybrid stood with her side facing Olivia and spread her feet a little wider than her shoulders, bending her knees somewhat. She raised one hand over her head and pointed her other hand in Olivia's direction, turning her head to look at the younger girl. "Now you try."

Olivia shifted into a stance similar to Mar'i's. "Not bad," Mar'i remarked, "but your footing's not exactly stable. I could knock you down easily."

"Ok, do it," Olivia challenged.

"You sure?" Mar'i asked. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Are you scared?" Olivia taunted.

Mar'i chuckled. "Ok. I see how it is. You must really want that spanking. Fine. Here comes."

Mar'i sprang off her front foot into a sweeping kick to Olivia's legs, while Olivia attempted to block Mar'i's kick with a kick of her own. Mar'i simply pulled her leg, which had hooked Olivia's blocking leg, up, thus knocking Olivia off-balance and to the ground.

"Ow . . ." Olivia moaned.

"Are you ok?" Mar'i asked, moving over to Olivia. "Did I hurt you?"

"Kinda . . ."

"I'm sorry." Mar'i moved to help Olivia back up onto her feet, only for Olivia to swing her leg up to kick Mar'i in the stomach when the older girl had crouched. "What the –?"

"Were you going to say a bad word?" Olivia asked as she rose to her feet. She hadn't quite knocked Mar'i down, but Mar'i had had to struggle to keep her footing, something Olivia took great satisfaction in.

Mar'i got up with a smile. "You know a little more than I thought. Have Dinah or Connor been teaching you stuff?"

"Yeah," Olivia replied. "Daddy doesn't want them to, so we have to keep it a secret." She came up to Mar'i and leaned up to whisper in her ear. "You're not gonna tell him, are you?"

"No, I won't tell him," Mar'i answered.

"Good!" Olivia chirped. "You know, I wanna be just like Mommy when I grow up."

"Does that mean you're going to wear fishnets, too?" Mar'i raised an eyebrow in amusement.

"Uh-huh," Olivia replied with her hands on her hips. "Because they make bad guys stupid when they look at them and then it's easier to beat them up."

Mar'i snickered. "They make good guys stupid, too, you know."

_

* * *

_

Two years later

* * *

"I sacrifice my Mystical Elf to summon . . . Dark Magician Girl!" Charlotte announced, removing the Mystical Elf card from the field and replacing it with the Dark Magician Girl card. Interestingly enough, the blonde, green-eyed, and blue-and-pink-clad mage was not what anyone would expect from someone with "dark" in their name. Then again, Charlotte was fond of "Dark Vengeance" and she was not exactly all that "dark" herself.

"Oh, yeah? I sacrifice my Fire Sorceress for Harpie Lady Sisters!" Olivia declared, removing the Fire Sorceress card from the field and replacing it with the Harpie Lady Sisters card.

"Aren't you a little young for that sort of thing?" Charlotte asked.

"What do you mean?" Olivia asked, looking at the three winged birdlike women on her card in confusion.

"Never mind," Charlotte answered. "You'll figure it out when you're older."

"And I add Cyber Harness to power them up!" Olivia declared, playing the equipment spell card that featured a metallic corset on the cover.

"Well, doesn't that just beat all?" Charlotte giggled. "Except I have three Dark Magicians in the graveyard, which boosts my Dark Magician Girl's attack strength by 300 times three!"

"What's that?"

"You're dead. My attack just cost you your last 300 life points."

"No way!"

"Yes way." Charlotte smiled. "But you played a good game. It's not your fault you lost; I just have more experience at this sort of thing."

Olivia slumped in her chair, just as her father came in. "Hey, Livy, Charlie. How's it going?"

"Just dandy, Mr. Queen!" Charlotte chirped cheerfully.

"Aw, man, don't call me Mr. Queen," Ollie groaned. "It makes me feel old."

"Well, you _are_ old," Charlotte retorted lightly.

"My daddy's not old!" Olivia protested.

"Yes, he is," Charlotte answered.

"No, he's not."

"Yes, he is."

"No, he's not."

"Yes, he is."

"Come on, girls, no need to fight," Ollie remarked jovially. "Charlie, you can call me Ollie, and Livy, I'll be just fine if you keep calling me Daddy."

"Ok, Daddy!" Olivia said.

"So, how was the game?" Ollie asked.

"I lost," Olivia replied gloomily.

"It's ok, Livy," Ollie said. "In times like this, losing isn't the end of the world. It can feel that way sometimes, but it isn't always the case."

"But if the Justice League lost, wouldn't the world end?" Olivia raised her head to Ollie with a quizzical expression on her face.

"Even the Justice League loses sometimes. In those cases, the bad guys did something they didn't expect or they were just too strong. But the Justice League wins in the end because they review their battles, they see what went wrong or what they didn't do right and they practice a lot so they can get better and the bad guys will lose next time."

"Really?"

"Really." He turned to Charlotte. "And I'm not old."

"Being old's not bad," Charlotte said. "Ted's old and he kicks butt."

"Yeah, but I'm not his age yet."

Olivia giggled. "You're silly, Daddy. I'll still love you no matter how old you get."

Ollie hugged Olivia. "Thanks, Olivia. That means a lot. More than you'll ever know . . ."

_

* * *

_

One year later

* * *

School let out and Olivia was headed for the bus when a van parked next to her. The passenger side window slid open and the woman in the driver's seat looked out through it, wearing a white headscarf and blue-tinted sunglasses. "Hi, Olivia. I'm here to take you home."

"Who are you?" Olivia asked.

"An old friend of your mother's," the woman replied. "It's ok. She knows. I even got her permission."

"Ok," Olivia said, climbing into the backseat of the van. Upon entering the van, she saw three "men in black" sitting in the van. "Who are you guys?"

"Let's just say we're the lady's bodyguards," one of the men, a blond fellow with a narrow face, replied.

"Ok," Olivia said.

As the woman drove, the second man, brunet and thick-featured, offered Olivia a juice pouch. Olivia took it and popped the straw into it, sipping the pouch dry. "Thank you," she said.

"You're welcome," the man answered.

It was only a minute later that Olivia started feeling woozy. She yawned. "I'm gonna take a nap."

"Sure," the third man, black-haired and fine-featured, said. "You can use my lap as a pillow."

"Ok," Olivia answered, and rested her head and upper torso on the man's lap. Soon enough, she passed into sleep.

When Olivia woke up, she had the feeling of being bound, like a mummy. She also felt like she was suspended in midair, being held aloft by something wrapped around her arms and legs. She tried to move her fingers and found that she couldn't. She felt something covering her head like a helmet, only she couldn't see out of it at all, inhibiting her efforts to look around. Even worse, she couldn't turn her head . . . and she felt things poking into her spine and neck.

"Where am I?!" she asked. "Mommy! Daddy! Where are you?!"

"Your parents aren't here right now," the voice of the woman who had picked her up at school replied.

"What do you want with me?!" Olivia asked.

"We can't tell you that right now, but when this is over, you'll know . . . and you'll be grateful to us for it," the woman answered.

Olivia would have struggled, but she was so thoroughly bound that the most she could do was wiggle very slightly. She vaguely heard the woman say, "Begin," and that was the last thing she processed before she felt multiple pricks in her spine and neck. She let out a small cry of pain and that was the last sensation she knew before . . .

When she came to, she felt awkward and uneven. She looked around and thought she was sitting on someone's shoulders, for how could she be so high up? Then she looked down and noticed that her legs were longer and more defined. Wait . . . her legs were covered in some kind of black semi-organic metal coating, and when she looked at her arms, they were coated in that same black metal. As a matter of fact, she could barely see her feet over a couple of strange large lumps on her chest, which were partially covered by the black metal coating, too.

"What's going on?" she asked, and her voice sounded weird to her ears, deeper and silkier.

She dared to look around and saw a bunch of people . . . not moving. Not only were they not moving, they had darkened red splotches all over their bodies and clothes. She crouched, not sure how to take all this in, but they weren't moving . . . and somehow, she knew that was her fault. She just didn't know _how_ it was her fault.

Just then, Ollie and Dinah entered, garbed in their Green Arrow and Black Canary costumes. Roy, Connor, Mia, Lian, and Dick entered, also costumed. Olivia's eyes widened when she saw her parents, and tears came to her eyes.

"Mommy? Daddy? Am I . . . ? Did I . . . ?"

Dinah rushed to Olivia and hugged her tightly, with tears choking her voice. "Olivia? What did they do to you?"

_

* * *

_

One week later

* * *

"We've run all the tests," Michael Holt, a.k.a. Mr. Terrific, replied, "and there's no way around it. We can't make Olivia eight years old again."

"All right," Ollie said. "Can you at least tell me what those bastards did to her?"

"As far as we can tell, a techno-organic weapons system has been implanted into Olivia's nervous system," Mr. Terrific explained. "Dr. Mid-Nite was able to determine its composition; it's a merger of nanobyte computers and extraterrestrial stem cells. We did some physical tests and it turns out that her physical abilities are on a metahuman level."

"Um, just _how_ metahuman?" Dinah asked.

"We don't know," Mr. Terrific admitted. "I wouldn't expect her to take on Superman or Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel and win, if that's what you're asking." His tone was utterly deadpan as he said that. "And her mental abilities are something else."

"What do you mean?" Dinah asked.

"Her cognition, memory, and reasoning skills have also been enhanced," Mr. Terrific replied. "I tested her in the form of a game . . . and . . ."

"And what?" Dinah prompted, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

"She beat me." The embarrassment radiated from the T-masked man in waves.

"She beat you? _You?_ Third smartest man in the world?"

"Yes. You don't have to rub it in."

"Ha! Yeah! My daughter's a genius!" Ollie crowed, prompting Dinah to smack him upside the head.

"Can we take her back home?" she asked.

"Yes, you can," Mr. Terrific replied. "I should warn you, she's been through a great deal. Don't be surprised if she has some difficulties adjusting."

"I think we're all going to have difficulties adjusting," Dinah remarked. "Where is she?"

"Sparring with the Wildcats," Mr. Terrific replied.

"With Ted and Tom?"

"Yeah."

"I'm not sure how I feel about that . . ."

"It's ok, Dinah. Livy's a big girl. She can hold her own."

Dinah sighed and went to the training area to find Olivia, Ollie following her. When the couple reached the JSA training grounds, they found a blonde who couldn't have been older than sixteen fighting both Ted Grant and Tom Bronson, the latter of whom had shifted into his werecat form. The blonde seemed to be handling them both fairly well, but that wasn't what shocked Dinah and Ollie. The thing that shocked them was that the blonde was dressed in a strapless black leather one-piece, fishnets, and low-heeled black leather boots, just like . . .

"Olivia?" Dinah uttered.

At that moment, Olivia slammed a palm into Tom's chest and kicked Ted in his solar plexus, knocking them both down. "Mommy!" She tackle-hugged Dinah with such speed that she nearly knocked her mother over. "Did you see me?"

"Yeah, I did," Dinah replied, "but what's that you're wearing?"

"Oh, this?" Olivia asked. "Some clothes you and Grandma Dinah left behind. Uncle Ted nearly fainted when he saw me in them, but I told him that there was nothing else for me to wear."

"You _let her_ dress like that?!" Ollie shouted at Ted.

"Keep your voice down," Ted grumbled, rising to his feet. "And it's not like she can't take care of herself."

"That's not the point!" Ollie exploded.

"Daddy!" Olivia cut in. "This is the outfit Mommy and Grandma Dinah wore when they were fighting bad guys. It made bad guys stupid, which made it easier for Mommy and Grandma Dinah to beat them. If I wear it, I can do the same thing!"

Ollie had no answer or retort for that, except . . . "I think you might have a point there, kiddo." He sighed. "Man, this is going to take some getting used to, but are you ready to come home with me and your mom?"

"Yeah!" Olivia chirped. She picked up a leather jacket and donned it. "Thanks for the spar, Uncle Ted. You, too, Tommy. I'll see you later!"

_

* * *

_

Eighteen months later

* * *

It had been a year and a half since Olivia Queen's life had irrevocably changed. Her childhood was gone, and she wasn't sure she missed it all that much. On the one hand, she liked being able to go places with Mar'i and Lian, places they once said she was too young to visit. She liked being able to fight like them and be taken seriously by them. She liked no longer being the "annoying little sister." On the other hand . . . she hadn't known just how much responsibility being "big" entailed.

She was expected to do things for herself now. While her parents and uncles and aunts would still help her from time to time, she was largely expected to figure out the larger picture herself. In and of itself, that wasn't so difficult, given her nigh-superhuman intelligence, but it could be nerve-wracking without practical experience to help her.

Then there was the way boys would look at her when they didn't think she was looking at them. Their eyes would lock onto those lumps on her chest – breasts, she had learned they were called – and hardly stray. At the times she showed her back to them, she got the feeling that their eyes were aimed somewhat lower than her back. It made her feel funny . . . and she wasn't sure how.

She'd tried to talk to her father about it, but he had gone into a tirade about "perverts" and "dogs." She didn't understand it; how were dogs and perverts connected? Dogs were cute, fluffy, adorable animals that showered someone with unconditional love and affection. Perverts were the creepy old men that stared at girls like her too long and too hard. There was absolutely no connection whatsoever.

One time, she'd gone to Helena with her question and Helena had smirked at her. "Those stares? That means they want to do you."

"Do me? How are they going to do me?"

"I mean they want to make the two-backed beast with you. They want to do the horizontal mamba with you. They want to do the bedroom tango with you. Or, if you don't get what any of those euphemisms mean, I'm just gonna cut to the chase. They want to do with you the kinds of things that your mother and father did with each other to bring you into the world."

Olivia had gasped.

"It's ok." Helena had patted Olivia's shoulder. "Eventually, you're gonna meet someone who not only wants to do those things with you, but wants to cuddle with you after. And if you're lucky, they'll want to do stuff with you outside the bedroom . . . or whatever available surface there is."

"Thanks, Aunt Helena," Olivia had said.

Now, Olivia was suiting up, having already donned the fishnets and leather one-piece. She put on knee-high leather boots, zipping them up and fastening the buckles around her calves. She slipped on motorcycle gloves and fastened the Velcro straps around her wrists. Finally, she put on a leather jacket with ridged armor on the shoulders.

She was ready now. She was the Black Canary, and she would do her mother and grandmother proud.

* * *

End Notes: There you go, Olivia Queen's secret origin. It'll lead into the next arc of this story, which will explain just who implanted Olivia with that weapons system and for what purpose. There was a lot I wanted to do here, but for the purposes of length I decided to keep it just to what you read. Hopefully, you enjoyed, and thank you for reading.


End file.
